


To Shame The Devil

by Kalliste



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, DADT Repeal, Don't Ask Don't Tell, Future Fic, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderswap, Internalized Homophobia, Multi, Pining, Sexswap, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-29 22:18:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 54,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/692107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalliste/pseuds/Kalliste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not like Nate’s never been picked up in a bar before, but he doesn’t ever remember it going quite like <i>this</i>.</p><p>In his experience, gorgeous, stacked, and insanely tall blondes who look like they should be gracing the cover of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue don’t generally saunter into grimy Cambridge dives populated by obnoxious Harvard grad students, walk straight up to his booth, plunk themselves down next to him without so much as a by-your-leave, and open with “I certainly hope that you’re not drinking Coors Lite or some similar lowbrow swill, or else I will have lost all faith in the pretentiousness of the dicksuck Ivy League communist elite of this country.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 한국어 available: [To Shame The Devil](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2627531) by [Lost_Stars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lost_Stars/pseuds/Lost_Stars)



> This story is a work of fiction, based on the fictionalized characters in the HBO miniseries _Generation Kill_. No reflection on the real people bearing these names is implied. No profit is being made and no harm is intended.
> 
> Infinite kudos go to my betas: the impossibly wonderful [Alethia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Alethia), whose endless enthusiasm encouraged me when I almost gave up on finishing this story, and caught what would otherwise have been major continuity errors in the story, and also to the ridiculously awesome J, who relentlessly called me on my shit, grammatical, ideological and otherwise. This story is infinitely better for their input, and all remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
>  **Note on timing:** This is set a couple of years after the events of _Generation Kill_ , so approximately mid-to-late 2005. Don't Ask Don't Tell, therefore, was still in effect for U.S. military personnel (the policy was not repealed until 2011).
> 
> I don't think there are any particularly strong triggers to warn about in this story, but for those who are concerned about issues regarding genderswap or homophobia, please see the end notes.
> 
> Enjoy!

It’s not like Nate’s never been picked up in a bar before, but he doesn’t ever remember it going quite like _this_.

In his experience, gorgeous, stacked, and insanely tall blondes who look like they should be gracing the cover of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue don’t generally saunter into grimy Cambridge dives populated by obnoxious Harvard grad students, walk straight up to his booth, plunk themselves down next to him without so much as a by-your-leave, and open with “I certainly hope that you’re not drinking Coors Lite or some similar lowbrow swill, or else I will have lost all faith in the pretentiousness of the dicksuck Ivy League communist elite of this country.”

Nate stared at the blonde, and she stared back. Her honey-colored hair was straight, in a jagged, spiky cut that just brushed her shoulders, framing an angular, high-cheekboned face whose features only just missed being too bold for femininity, and were all the more arresting as a result. Her striking features were dominated by a frankly stunning pair of ice blue eyes, which were currently wide and serious, fixed upon Nate’s face, and yet they were mocking him at the same time. Challenging him. Huh.

An indignant response to her sally would mean he’d already lost, he knew. He’d played this game too many times to count, but this was the first time he could remember playing it with a woman. A _civilian_ woman, at that.

Still, he knew the rules. He raised a single eyebrow in reply and slid his glass over in front of her. “Harpoon IPA,” he said.

“Microbrew, local but not obscure,” she observed. “A bit bourgeois, perhaps, but acceptable.” She picked up his half-full pint glass and downed it in one go, before slamming it back down on the table and giving Nate a wide, shit-eating, slightly foamy grin. Nate knew it was a total cliché to find it unbearably hot when a woman did things like that, but that didn’t change the fact that it was, in fact, unbearably hot. Especially when it was a woman who looked like _this_.

He pulled his gaze from her with some difficulty and glanced across the booth, where his roommate was sitting with his mouth hanging open. “Mark,” Nate said, significantly, “would you mind…”

Mark blinked, looking woken from a trance. “Uh,” he said, intelligently, but then he caught on immediately, bless him. “Yeah, I’ll… catch you later, man.” He slid from the booth, eyes still hung helplessly on the blonde, who was paying him no attention whatsoever, and stumbled off, no doubt to call everyone he’d ever met to tell them about Nate’s Big Score. Nate sighed inwardly.

“So, Harvard,” the blonde said to Nate. She wiped her mouth absently, licking a bit of spilled ale off the pad of her thumb, and Nate tried to pretend that didn’t make his pants get a tiny bit tighter. She half-turned toward him and drew one leg up onto the seat, leaving barely two inches of free space between them, and hooked one elbow over the back of the booth. Nate noted in passing that her arm, while smooth and proportionate to the rest of her, was subtly corded with muscle; she was no flimsy desk jockey, that was for sure.

Meanwhile she was gazing at him with that same earnest, possibly-mocking stare. “So tell me. You come here often?”

So it was a cliché contest now, was it? “Clearly not often enough,” he supplied the obvious rejoinder, with equal mock-seriousness, letting his eyes rake over her, once.

Her lips drew up in a half-grin, and she gave him a little nod of approval for correctly guessing the game. “Clearly not,” she replied with a smirk, and suddenly darted in close, brushing her lips with his. Nate felt a jolt of electricity surge through him at the fleeting touch before she drew back, her eyes dark. Nate licked his lips without meaning to, and saw her eyes follow the movement before she quirked a smile at him again, falling back into her previous playful mood. Nate smirked back, relaxing along the back of the booth. He hadn’t enjoyed a flirtation so much in years, and he was pretty sure he already knew where this was going. _Go Team Fick_.

“And this is where you give me your best line for getting the girls to go all melty inside,” she instructed him, solemnly.

“Honey,” Nate replied, with a perfectly straight face, “you look so good I could put you on a plate and sop you up with a biscuit.”

Her eyes widened and she burst into startled, completely spontaneous laughter. Nate grinned, triumphant. He had won that round quite handily, if he did say so himself.

She seemed to agree, giving him a golf clap even as she was still chuckling. “Holy hell, Nate,” she snickered, “that’s the worst pick-up line I’ve ever _heard_. Congrats.”

Nate blinked, grin fading. “How did you know my name?”

She blinked at him a moment in turn, and then the smile dropped off her face. “Uh,” she said. “I – asked around.”

“You asked around,” Nate repeated. “About me.”

She shrugged, not quite nonchalantly enough. Her face was still now, carefully blank. “Yeah.”

Nate knew he must look skeptical, probably because he was. “Any reason you were asking about me in particular?”

She gave him a smoky look and slid closer on the bench, leaning forward so that her low-cut shirt gave him a _thoroughly_ good look at her (spectacular) cleavage. “Does it matter?” she asked, pale blue eyes gazing at him through thick black lashes, and laid a hand on his thigh, just below his crotch.

Just like before, her touch was electric, and Nate felt it thrumming all through him, warm and crackling. Shit, maybe it _didn’t_ matter. The hottest woman he’d ever seen in person was offering herself to him on a silver platter; what difference did it make if she’d found out his name already? He should just let go, enjoy himself.

But… no. _Dammit_ , but no.

This was… off. Something about the whole scenario was seriously pinging Nate’s radar, and he’d learned the value of following his instincts a long, long time ago. He leaned back from her slightly and moved her hand off his thigh, gently but firmly.

“Yeah,” he told her, “it matters.”

She pursed her lips in momentary frustration, and then tried a pout. This happened to be a scorchingly good look on her, even if she didn’t seem to be very good at it (lack of practice, perhaps?), but Nate only raised his eyebrows in reply, the same look he used to give his Marines when they tried to bullshit him.

The blonde evidently had no more trouble interpreting this look than his men had in Iraq, years ago. She sat back with an exasperated sigh, dropping the pout and the seductiveness together with an almost audible thump.

“Should’ve known,” she muttered to herself, and straightened, squaring her shoulders in a way that suddenly struck Nate as oddly familiar, even as he was thoroughly distracted by what the move did to her breasts. “I was doing re– I was checking you out specifically, yeah,” she admitted, changing direction mid-sentence. Nate frowned. What had she been about to say?

“Why?” he asked again.

She shifted, and said evasively, “You shouldn’t be that surprised that people would know who you are, Captain Fick. There are two books out there about you, after all.”

 _Oh_. Nate felt a wave of disappointment. She was one of those, then. Shit, he should have known this was too good to be true. It usually was.

It always made him feel… used, when people hit on him because of the whole _Rolling Stone_ thing, or even because of his own book. Maybe even more by the latter than the former. Maybe it was snobbish or hypocritical of him (or maybe just stupid), but he’d much rather someone want him for himself, than that someone want him just because he was (very slightly) famous.

It was a shame; there was something about her that had made him feel strangely comfortable, at home, despite her nearly supernatural hotness. But no more; all the lazy, humming sense of anticipation he’d been feeling while talking to her had vanished, and now he just felt tired.

“Right, of course,” he answered her politely. “How silly of me, I should have guessed.” He was trying to maintain a pleasant expression, but by the taken-aback look on her face, he wasn’t succeeding very well.

She studied him, surprise fading into a look Nate couldn’t quite interpret. “I’ve fucked this up, haven’t I,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“No,” Nate lied, “It’s just…” He trailed off, even now still having no idea how to convey _I don’t do starfuckers_ in any remotely socially acceptable manner. She seemed to get it anyway, and her lips twisted in a grin that Nate somehow knew was self-mocking, this time.

The sight of it gave Nate a sudden and inexplicably intense sense of déjà vu. He’d seen that lopsided, weary, beautiful grin somewhere before, he was sure of it. But he’d _certainly_ remember meeting a woman like her if he had, and he hadn’t. He was sure of that, too. So, then, how…

The woman shook her head. “It’s all right, sir,” she told him, sounding resigned. “I have no fucking clue what I’m doing here, anyway.”

Nate frowned. _Sir?_

Then she seemed to realize what she’d said, and her eyes widened in something that looked almost like panic. “Nate, I meant,” she corrected herself. “Not – Sorry. I didn’t – there was no disrespect intended.”

Nate stared at her, feeling like there was something major he was right on the edge of understanding, like a word just on the tip of his tongue but not yet formed. Something about her smile, and that _sir_ , and…

She jumped to her feet, so swiftly the booth table was knocked askew. Nate started in surprise. “This was a mistake,” she said, and her face was a study of overlapping emotions, something wistful and pained and angry all mixed up together. Then she seemed to pull herself together, blanking her face, and stood up ramrod straight.

“My apologies, Captain,” she said. “This won’t happen again. I wish – I wish you all the best.”

Then, as Nate gaped at her, she turned on her heel and strode out of the bar, going as fast as she could without actually running. Practically every guy in the place turned to watch her go.

Nate was watching her go too, but for entirely different reasons. His mind churned like an engine on overdrive. That had been no civilian apology. That had been no _civilian_. He’d seen that grin before. _Dicksuck Ivy League communist elite._ Ice-blue eyes. _It’s all right, sir._ Blonde hair. _I was doing re-_

_I was doing recon._

“Holy fucking shit,” he said to himself, very quietly, and bolted to his feet and ran for the exit.

 

* * *

 

As ever, Ray had truly uncanny timing. Brad’s phone rang just as he was clearing the bar’s parking lot and hurrying out into the street.

His bike was in the lot, but Brad didn’t trust himself to drive it at the moment. Besides, he didn’t dare risk the time it would take; he had to get away now, now, now. He’d come back for it later.

His phone was still ringing. Brad pulled it out without breaking stride, turning a corner at random. Anything to get out of sight of the bar. Or anyone leaving it.

“ _Hey-hey, girlie-man, so how did –_ ” Ray’s voice began.

“Shut the fuck up, Ray,” Brad snapped, hating that his voice was now higher than Ray’s, if only slightly. And how was he supposed to properly ream anyone out when his voice sounded kind of… breathy... no matter what he did? “This is officially the stupidest fucking idea anyone has ever had in the history of mankind, and I ought to fucking punch myself in the face for even considering going along with it.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “ _So, not well, then,_ ” Ray observed, brilliantly.

“Truly, Ray, your mental acuity knows no bounds,” Brad told him. At least his sarcasm was still in working order.

Brad turned another corner slightly too rapidly and almost stumbled. His reflexes and balance had improved drastically since the first few days of the change, but sometimes losing nearly four inches of height, not to mention compensating for having his entire center of gravity shifted thanks to wider hips and the two giant fucking _masses_ on his chest, caught up with him unexpectedly. Thank God he wasn’t likely to be asked to fire a weapon anytime soon.

Or, possibly, ever again. Brad shook that thought off firmly.

“ _He actually turned you down?_ ” Ray sounded incredulous. “ _What, were you wearing a bag over your head, or did the LT just have a dick-ectomy and we didn’t hear?_ ”

“He thought I was a fucking starstruck _groupie_ , you inbred simpleton,” Brad growled, turning into a less than savory-smelling alley between two buildings. “Of course he turned me down. I have no idea why we expected anything different.” _No idea why I expected him to be any less… honorable, just because it’s a pussy in front of him instead of a dick._

Ray made a _Huh_ noise, and Brad knew that Ray understood that without having to say it either. “ _Well, but I figured even the LT – I mean, have you_ seen _you?_ ”

“It doesn’t matter,” Brad told him, weariness replacing anger. “I had to get out of there anyway. He almost made me.” Another thing he should absolutely have expected, in retrospect.

“Not ‘almost’,” a voice said from behind him, and Brad stopped dead in his tracks.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck _fuck_.

He closed his eyes, hoping with all his might that when he opened them none of this would ever have happened, that he would be back in England in the RM barracks with his unequivocally male self, instead of standing in some piss-smelling alley in Cambridge, in a fucking _woman’s body_ , having been caught trying to seduce his own former commanding officer, because how the fuck did this happen to _anyone_ , let alone him?

“Turn around,” Nate said to him. Brad didn’t move; couldn’t, for a moment. Nate’s voice sharpened, and it was Captain Fick who snapped, “I said _turn around_ , Sergeant Colbert.”

Brad was turning, obeying that note of command, before he even fully realized it. He turned, and there was N- the captain, standing in the alley behind him, arms crossed over his chest. His green eyes bored into Brad’s, and Brad couldn’t look away.

“ _Oh, shit,_ ” Ray’s voice said, and only then did Brad notice he still had the phone to his ear.

“Ray, I’ll have to call you back,” he said, faintly amazed at how calm his voice sounded, and hung up on Ray without another word. He stuck the phone in his pocket, using the move as an excuse to break his gaze from the captain’s. Then he did the only thing that seemed logical: he stood up straight, arms at his sides, and stared at the wall just over Nate’s right shoulder, waiting for… whatever was going to happen, to happen.

Nate stepped closer, running his gaze up and down the length of Brad’s body. But even from the corner of his eye, Brad could tell it wasn’t the way a man normally checked out a woman. This was… not clinical, exactly, but something close. _Assessing_ , maybe.

Nate circled behind him, examining him from all angles, and Brad told himself it was ridiculous to tense up. If Nate was going to punch him, it would be face to face. He wondered, absently, if it would hurt more to be punched as a woman, or if it would feel about the same. It seemed reasonable to suppose “more”, but he’d read somewhere that women actually have a higher pain threshold than men, so what the hell did he know?

Nate made a complete circuit of him and ended up staring Brad in the face from less than a foot away, which brought into sharp, annoying relief the fact that Nate was now taller than Brad was. By less than two inches, but still. Brad resolutely kept his eyes on the wall opposite him, but he could see, in his peripheral vision, Nate’s brilliant green eyes roving over his features, no doubt cataloguing the differences from, or maybe searching for similarities to, Brad’s real face.

“Fucking hell,” Nate said at last. “It really is you, isn’t it?”

Brad almost blinked at the note of wonder in Nate’s voice, where he had been expecting only anger. But then Nate raised his hand toward Brad’s face, swiftly. Brad didn’t let himself flinch, exactly, but he couldn’t help bracing himself for the blow.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the captain’s eyes widen and his hand freeze in mid-motion. “What – Jesus, Brad!” he said, and this time he did sound angry. “Do you really think I would – ” he broke off and took a step back, as if appalled.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did, sir,” Brad said quietly, still watching the wall. It was the simple truth. Brad’s actions this night had been unconscionable, in retrospect. No, not in retrospect; he’d known they were before he’d ever walked into the bar, and he’d done it anyway. But he’d been so sure it was the only way…

“Eyes on me, Marine,” Nate said, and Brad’s gaze snapped to him automatically. Nate gave him a stern stare. “That’s never going to happen, Brad,” he said, stressing each word. “Understood?”

Brad nodded, slowly. “Understood.” _Of course_ , he thought. Nate would never hit a woman. Even if that woman happened to be Brad. Another thing he should have known about Nate Fick. It seemed his intel on his former CO was turning out to be very poor indeed.

“That said,” Nate continued, crossing his arms again, “I think you owe me an explanation. At the very _least_.”

Brad couldn’t personally think of anything he wanted to give less. “It’s better if you don’t get involved, Captain. I’ve caused you enough trouble – ”

“If you didn’t want me _involved_ , Brad, then you probably shouldn’t have come all the way to Cambridge to hit on me,” Nate said, dryly.

Brad stiffened involuntarily, eyes shifting back to the wall. “Yes, sir. I was – ” _desperate_ “ – my actions were inexcusable, sir.”

Nate tilted his head, considering him. Brad couldn’t decipher his expression, and doubted he would have been able to even if he’d been looking at the captain straight on.

At length, Nate let out a long breath, seeming to have come to some decision. “Okay,” he said, and turned away, back toward the mouth of the alley. “Let’s go.”

 _Let’s_ go? No, _let’s_ going anywhere was a very bad idea. Brad tried one more time: “Sir, I don’t – ”

Nate spun back and took two swift steps forward until he was right back in Brad’s face, green eyes sparking with something very like fury. “Sergeant, I don’t pretend to have the first goddamn clue of what the fuck is going on here, but if you think I’m going to leave one of my men out in the cold when he’s in trouble, then you have seriously underestimated me, and frankly I resent the implication that I would even consider it. Now shut the fuck up and fall in.”

He turned again and strode off. Brad swallowed hard, and followed.


	2. Chapter 2

In the car, Nate negotiated the nonsensical streets surrounding Harvard with only half his attention. The rest of it was on his passenger, currently sitting shotgun with her – his head turned resolutely away from Nate, watching the city roll by outside her – his window. Other than to give the address of her – his – _dammit_ – hotel when Nate asked for it, Brad hadn’t said a word since docilely following Nate from the alley to his car back in the bar parking lot.

 _Fucking gendered pronouns should be outlawed in the English language_ , Nate thought, a little unreasonably. He had far too many concerns at the moment to keep getting distracted by questions of _grammar_ , for God’s sake. It had seemed clear which he should say out loud to Brad, because he couldn’t imagine in a million years that this was something Brad had _chosen_ , but internally the impulse to slip into the feminine referent was difficult to combat.

Nate couldn’t help being a little amused at himself. _Trust me to be worrying about nomenclature at a time like this._

Not that he had any idea how to even categorize “a time like this,” because it sure as hell wasn’t like any time _Nate_ had ever had. Nate still wasn’t a hundred percent sure that he wasn’t going to wake up at any moment and find out that this whole night had been the most severely fucked-up dream he’d ever had, and that was including the nightmares he’d been plagued by for months after OIF. At least dreaming of spraying blood and zipping bullets and dismembered children playing with live ordnance had made sense _,_ in context.

But dreaming of Brad as a _woman_ , and more importantly as a woman who apparently wanted to _kiss_ him… Nate had no frame of reference for that at all. Which led him to believe that this probably wasn’t a dream. Nate just didn’t think he had that good of an imagination, frankly.

He still hadn’t been sure he was right, hadn’t truly believed his own deductions, even when he’d caught up with her outside the bar and overheard her calling someone on the phone an “inbred simpleton” (which meant that the person on the other end of the line was almost certainly Ray – a fact which Brad had confirmed a moment later – and didn’t _that_ just deepen the mystery), but all doubt had fled when he’d ordered, not some woman, but _Sergeant Colbert_ to turn around, and she – he – had obeyed instantly.

It had made Nate a little uneasy, falling back into a role he didn’t technically have a right to anymore, but Brad was clearly so much more at ease dealing with Captain Fick, USMC, than with Nate Fick, Harvard grad student, that Nate had instinctively accommodated him. Her. Whatever. It was a little fucked up, maybe, but what about this situation _wasn’t_? That was, after all, the last – the _only_ – way they’d ever interacted together, at least on the surface.

Until tonight he hadn’t seen or spoken to Brad since Nate’s paddle party, over two years ago now. They’d exchanged a few laconic emails since then, mostly to update the other on changes of address – Nate when he’d moved to Massachusetts, Brad when he’d gone to England – and occasionally on Brad’s part to complain about Ray, or some Corps-related clusterfuck he knew Nate would appreciate, or Ray – but other than that, nothing. Nate had assumed, or would have assumed if he’d thought about it, that Brad had pretty much forgotten all about him.

Nate hadn’t forgotten _him_ , of course, but he had never been foolish enough to believe their unexpected camaraderie in Iraq would survive Nate’s departure from the Corps, or even just their return to the States. In some alternate universe, Nate had thought, where he and Brad had not been positioned athwart that indelible line between officer and enlisted man, they might have been friends, maybe even good friends. But they had been, and they weren’t, and that was all there was to it.

Or that _had_ been all there was to it. Now he didn’t know what the fuck to think. Trying to puzzle out Brad’s motivations in coming on to him was almost as confounding as trying to work out how the hell Brad could have switched genders.

 _And there’s a sentence I never thought I’d think, either_ , Nate thought dryly. He devoutly hoped Brad’s hotel room had aspirin. Or better yet, liquor.

“We’re here,” Brad said suddenly, pointing at the Best Western coming up on the left. Nate pulled into the lot and parked, and got out of the car. He waited a moment, and then leaned back down to peer into the car, where Brad still hadn’t moved.

“On your feet, Marine,” Nate said, making it as gentle as he could, and Brad moved then, reaching for the door handle. Nate straightened just as Brad swung out of the car and stood, and Nate was disoriented all over again, seeing a stunning woman appear where he mentally expected his sergeant to be.

Brad’s features were starkly illuminated by the sodium lights overhead, and even in such unforgiving lighting there was no question that Brad as a woman was simply exquisite. Nate noted again the subtle changes that made this new face so similar to yet completely different from Brad as a man: the eyes, ever so slightly larger, framed by thicker lashes, and set forward instead of shadowed under a heavy brow ridge; the eyebrows, arched and delicate instead of straight and bushy; the narrower nose and more pronounced cheekbones; fuller, lusher lips; and a pointed, almost dainty chin, where Brad’s had been squared, with a definite cleft. And no five o’clock shadow, of course. And the hair, which…

With a start, Nate realized he had been standing and staring at Brad across the roof of the car, cataloguing her – his face, for – Jesus, how long had he been doing that? Brad was staring straight back at him, and even though her face was Iceman blank, his eyes… burned, with some fierce, banked emotion. Nate wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was. He hoped it wasn’t anger for being stared at like a circus freak, at least.

“Sorry,” Nate said after far too long a pause. “I just – it’s…”

“It’s fine, sir,” Brad said. Startlingly, his lips quirked in a small smirk. “At least you didn’t narrate it in your, and I quote, ‘porno voice’.”

Nate raised an eyebrow. “Ray?”

“Ray,” Brad confirmed, with a long-suffering look. Nate fought down a grin, not entirely successfully.

“Room’s this way, sir,” Brad said, jerking her head behind her.

“Lead the way,” Nate told him.

It wasn’t until he was following Brad into the hotel that it occurred to him to wonder how it was that he knew Brad’s features so well as to be able to compare them to these new ones in such detail, even though he hadn’t seen Brad’s real face in years.

 

* * *

 

The room was like every other mid-range hotel room in America: bland, pleasant, at least nominally clean. Though Nate was willing to bet that the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue on the table by the window hadn’t come standard with the room. Brad saw him eyeing it and snorted, grabbing the two courtesy tumblers out of the bathroom and flicking off the little paper covers.

“Drink?” he asked, unnecessarily, already opening the bottle. Nate sank into one of the two chairs flanking the small round table and held out a hand in response. Brad smirked, seeming to have regained some of her equilibrium, and placed a tumbler one-third full of rich, amber-colored liquid in Nate’s hand before pouring another for himself. Herself. Himself.

Nate really had to work out this pronoun thing at some point.

But for now, he contented himself with a slow, appreciative first sip of his drink. It wasn’t often he got to enjoy a three hundred dollar bottle of whiskey. He supposed Brad felt the situation warranted it, and even without knowing what the situation _was_ , yet, Nate was inclined to agree. The intense, smoky flavor was enough to have him closing his eyes to savor it, rolling the velvety liquid on his tongue a moment before swallowing.

He opened his eyes just in time to catch Brad’s gaze jerking away from his face, that same heated look in his eyes as before. Nate shifted uncomfortably. If that really had been a woman sitting across from him he would have been sure what that look meant, but this was _Brad_. He couldn’t possibly still be running the same gag on him now as he had been in the bar, could he?

“Just – this isn’t some kind of giant joke, is it, Brad?” Nate blurted. “The thing with me, in the bar, and – ”

Brad’s head snapped toward him, and the look on his face made Nate want to bite his own tongue. “A _joke_?” he said, furiously. “You thought – ” He stopped, then, and something in her face seemed to collapse, just a little. “But of course you would think that,” Brad said, flatly. “What else could it have possibly been? This whole _thing_ is a joke.” She glanced at her tumbler and tossed it back in one gulp, and Nate winced, more for the bitterness in his tone than for the abuse of such fine alcohol.

Brad reached for the bottle on the table, and without thinking Nate clapped his hand over hers – his, stilling it against the glass where it curled around the neck of the bottle. Brad went rigid, staring at the bottle, or their hands, and Nate tried to marshal his thoughts, to find the words to unfuck what he’d just said and make it right. It felt not unlike picking his way through a minefield.

“Brad,” Nate said, and waited until Brad looked up at him. “I’m sorry. I should never have believed you would – ” he searched for a way to phrase the rest of that, gave up, and went on – “Look, I don’t know what this is, and I won’t until you explain it to me, but one thing I do know now is that this – this thing, whatever has happened to you – is no fucking joke, and I have no intention of treating it as one. You have my word on that.”

He tried to put every ounce of certainty he felt into that last. Brad’s nostrils flared, sucking in a breath. He made no reply, but Nate felt him relax, just a little.

“So,” Nate said, after a moment. “Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on, or am I going to have to call Ray and get his version?”

There was a pause, and then Brad’s mouth twitched. “That is shockingly sneaky and underhanded of you, sir. I’m astonished.”

Nate pretended to be affronted. “I’ll have you know I can be very sneaky indeed when I want to be, Sergeant. Dastardly, even.”

Now it was definitely a smirk. “ _Dastardly_. Really.”

“I roll deep, Brad.”

Brad laughed, and it was that same startled chuckle she’d given Nate in the bar, unforced and genuine. Nate didn’t analyze too closely how pleased it made him, that he could get that reaction out of Brad.

“Okay,” Brad said. His chuckles had faded, but there was still a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “We’re going to need more whiskey for that, though.”

He tugged at his hand gently, and only then did Nate realize he still had his own hand over Brad’s on the bottle, lightly trapping it. He pulled his hand away, flushing, and tried to ignore the way it was still tingling as he watched Brad pour herself another generous measure. Brad held the bottle up inquiringly, and Nate held out his own tumbler for a refill.

Liquor dispensed, Brad sat back and sipped his more slowly this time, and Nate followed suit, content to wait now that Brad had tacitly agreed to explain things to him. They had all night; Nate was in no rush.

At length, Brad said, “The truth is, sir, I’m still not sure _what_ exactly happened. I was in London, on leave, and I was not exactly sober at the time. And I was… angry.”

“What were you angry about?” Nate asked.

“Not important,” Brad tossed off, which made Nate instantly sure that whatever had upset him, it _was_ important. But he held his peace, and Brad went on, “It’s only relevant because it made me a little more reckless than I might otherwise have been. And apparently,” and here he grimaced, “I said… things I shouldn’t have said. Agreed to things I shouldn’t have agreed to. ”

This was really failing to clear anything up for Nate. “To whom did you say these things?” he asked.

“The man,” Brad said, and fell silent.

Brad’s use of the definite article was peculiar, Nate thought. Not _a_ man, but _the_ man. It tickled something in the back of his head, but he couldn’t place it.

Nate waited, but Brad volunteered nothing further. Finally, he prompted, “The man?”

“I didn’t get a name. Or if I did, I don’t remember it.”

Nate had never had any formal training in interrogation, but he’d studied enough about it under the aegis of COIN – and been on the receiving end of it, during his SERE training – that he had a pretty fair idea of the basics. With a non-hostile but reluctant subject, he remembered, it was often easier for them to tell their story if they were led through it in simple stages. Of course, Brad knew that as well as he did, but that didn’t mean the psychology wasn’t still valid.

So he asked, “You said this was in London?”

“Yes.”

“Where in London? Was it a bar, or – ”

That should have been an easy question, but Brad hesitated for a long moment before answering, “It – yes. More or less.”

 _What did that mean?_ Nate wondered, but decided to leave it, and said instead, “Okay. So you met this man in a bar in London. Were you already drunk when you met him?”

“Yes.”

“How exactly did you meet him? Did he introduce himself to you?”

“No,” Brad said. “I – I talked to him first.”

Nate paused. That didn’t seem like Brad, really. Not that Brad was shy – Nate mentally snorted at the mere notion – but Brad was the kind of guy who either arrived with any people he might want to socialize with in the first place, or came alone and stayed that way. Unless he was there to pick up girls, of course. But then why would he be talking to a man?

He asked, “Why did you decide to talk to him?”

Brad didn’t answer, staring into his tumbler again. Abruptly he downed it a second time and reached for the bottle, almost fumbling it; Nate had never seen him so clumsy. But, Nate reasoned, Brad was dealing with an entirely different body than the one he’d had all his life, and was probably on his way to getting good and buzzed to boot. Perhaps it was more amazing that he had any coordination at all.

Brad poured himself more whiskey, and fell back into contemplating it again, leaning forward in his chair to rest his forearms on his knees. Nate did his best to ignore how the move made her breasts shift beneath the thin fabric of her shirt. _Stay on target, Fick._

“Brad,” he said. “Why did you decide to talk to him?”

Brad took a deep breath, and said, “Because I wanted to fuck him.” 


	3. Chapter 3

…oh.

Nate blinked, rapidly, as his mental conception of the world played musical chairs with itself and resettled into a new and, Nate admitted, thoroughly baffling configuration. Brad was – really?

But he was – he was _Brad_.

Not just a Marine, but the _Iceman_ , the Marine other Marines hoped they would be when they grew up. How did that square with – and hadn’t he been engaged to a woman? And hadn’t he talked about women all the time in theater?

_No_ , Nate thought, suddenly. Brad hadn’t talked about women in Iraq – he’d talked about _prostitutes_. Which, granted, were also women ( _or men,_ Nate abruptly realized), but by his own admission Brad had regarded actual _relationships_ with women to be a total waste of his time. Nate had assumed, when he thought about it at all, that that was either just plain sexism (Marines, after all, are not generally the most socially progressive bunch), or a by-product of how badly he’d gotten burned by his ex-fiancée. Or both. But now…

Well, all the best lies carry an element of truth, don’t they? If Brad’s lack of interest in dating women was due to an entirely different factor, one he couldn’t talk about, then what better way to cover it than to pretend it was the emotional involvement, and not the gender, that turned him off?

And yes, he’d been engaged, but once he’d had a moment to think about it, Nate knew that that meant nothing. The more significant aspect, in fact, was not that Brad had been engaged, but that the engagement had ended – and ended badly.

Not to mention, Nate suddenly thought, that as far as he knew they only had Brad’s word on why the engagement had actually been called off in the first place. Or, for that matter, that it had ever even existed.

_Damn._

Everything else flooded in on him, all the other things it had never occurred to him to find significant. Brad’s self-promoted reputation as a loner (“ _The only thing I miss back home is my bike_ ”). The way he held himself apart from the other men. A brother, but not a friend; admired, respected, but from afar, never letting anyone get too close. Even his very proficiency as a Marine…

_Always striving to be the perfect warrior_ , Nate thought with a pang. _To be flawless_. To compensate for the one flaw he couldn’t train away?

God, it made so much sense.

His first impulse was to yell at Brad for jeopardizing his career by talking to Nate about it, but a second later he realized that DADT didn’t apply here. Nate was no longer Brad’s CO, their shenanigans tonight notwithstanding. Brad was in no danger from Nate.

Well. That was not really true, Nate acknowledged. Nate may no longer be in Brad’s chain of command, but there were any number of contacts Nate could drop a quiet word to if he so chose, and be sure to be heeded. He could indirectly end Brad’s career almost as easily out of the Corps as in. When it came to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, more often than not the accusation was all that was necessary.

All of which Brad knew as well as he. Brad knew exactly how much he had risked, confessing this to Nate. Nate was humbled by the trust Brad showed him even as he was confused by it. Why tell him?

Nate suddenly realized that his silence had stretched for far too long. Brad had still not turned to look at him, but every line of him was strung tight as a piano wire, and growing more so with every second that continued to go by without a response from Nate.

Nate tried to think of something to say that would express – what? That it didn’t bother him? That he wouldn’t rat Brad out?

_Did_ it bother him?

Nate wasn’t sure, honestly. But he did know he would never in a million years have breathed a word about it to the Corps, so he supposed that, therefore, it clearly didn’t bother him enough to matter much. And besides, there were still larger issues at hand.

So he said, “And then what happened?”

Brad blinked, and swiveled to face Nate with an incredulous look, as if to say, _That’s all you have to say about it?_ Nate gave him a _get on with it_ look in return.

“Well?” he said, making sure to sound impatient. “I’m assuming this leads somehow to you switching fucking _genders_ , Brad, but so far I’m hearing nothing relevant to our central problem here.”

Brad stared at him, and Nate kept his return gaze steady, watched Brad take his tacit meaning – _I’m hearing nothing relevant here_ – and correctly parse it for both the acknowledgement of the necessity for secrecy it was, and Nate’s refusal to have this revelation change anything about how Nate regarded him.

Because it didn’t; Nate was sure of that now. Nate had been privileged to walk through the closest thing possible to hell on earth with Brad, had fought alongside him, laughed with him, grieved with him, and found support and confidence from him when all his other buoys and anchors had been taken away, and as far as Nate was concerned, who Brad fucked had less than nothing to do with any of that.

“Right,” Brad said, and looked away, and Nate pretended not to see the suspiciously bright sheen in his eyes as he found the lamp next to the bed abruptly fascinating. “My apologies, sir. I’ll try to stay on point from here on.”

“See that you do,” he said, with as much mock-sternness as he could muster, and saw Brad’s lips curve in a tiny smile in response.

Deep inside, Nate knew there was another part of this he wasn’t letting himself acknowledge, yet, but one thing at a time. A mission lived or died on its intel; Nate needed to get the rest of this story out of Brad first before dealing with any of the repercussions thereof.

One thing at a time.

 

* * *

 

“See that you do,” Nate said, with mischievous, feigned severity, and Brad smiled involuntarily even as something in his belly twisted into a hopeless, aching knot of _want_.

It’s not like he’d _wanted_ to fall in love with his CO, he thought. It was the absolute last thing he had wanted, in fact, the one thing he had sworn to himself would never, ever happen. He was _not_ going to be the fulfillment of every last dumbass, backwoods, undereducated, gay panic paranoia stereotype out there, goddammit. It was beneath his fucking _dignity_.

But what was he supposed to do when Nate kept insisting on being so… so fucking _Nate_?

He almost wished Nate had taken the revelation like Brad had feared he would, almost regretted that Nate hadn’t shown the revulsion and disgust toward Brad he’d half-expected. If Nate had sneered or shuddered or thrown a punch like Brad was sure most of his brothers in the Corps would have after a night like tonight, it would have… well, it would have torn him up, fine, but it would have also been a strange and terrible relief, to have proof that Nate was not worthy of the pedestal Brad had, all unwillingly, set him upon.

But no, it wasn’t enough that Nate was a good Marine and a better officer; he also just had to go and be a decent human being, too, as beautiful on the inside as he was on the surface, and that was just fucking unfair. How was Brad supposed to defend himself against that?

Worse, he didn’t see how he was going to be able to tell the rest of this story to Nate without revealing how utterly, stupidly, unforgivably head-over-heels Brad was for him. And while Nate had shown a shocking amount of tolerance thus far for the idea that his former sergeant liked dick, there was no way he would be as unfazed to discover that Brad wanted _his_ dick, specifically.

That he ached to have Nate inside him, in every way. That he wanted to own Nate’s body and heart and soul the way that Nate, all unknowingly, already owned his.

_Fuck, but you’re pathetic._

But Brad had already known, back in the alley, when he’d followed Nate, that this was where the night’s revelations would inevitably lead, and he’d gone anyway. Because maybe he’d known, down deep, that it had to be done.

Maybe his strange and terrible relief was still to come, when he knew for sure that his idiot love could never be returned. Maybe that was what the curse or contract or whatever the fuck it was called for: not fulfillment, but expurgation.

A wound had to be cleansed, no matter the pain thus caused, before it could heal; otherwise it just festered. The most boot private in the world knew that. It was time for Brad to man the fuck up, no pun intended, and get it over with already.

“Brad?” Nate prompted, gentle and inexorable, and Brad sighed, and told him the rest.

 

* * *

 

“I’m flattered,” said the man. He was grinning a liar’s grin, bright and far too knowing, but Brad had far too much whiskey sloshing around inside him right then to notice, or care. He only remembered the grin later.

The man turned his back to the bar, leaning an elbow upon it, and absently swirled his drink, which was probably some effete pansyass British shit like _brandy_ , around the bottom of his glass. He was examining Brad intently, but it seemed, Brad thought later, that it was less in lustful interest, and more – appraising. Like Brad was a cut of meat he was considering purchasing.

_Fatted calf,_ Brad found himself thinking, randomly, and shook it off in confusion. “You should be,” he told the man, and meant it. He _should_ be flattered; Brad didn’t try to sublimate his sorry forbidden desires with just anyone.

“Oh, I am,” the man reassured him. “I’m terribly attracted to vanity.” He grinned some more. “Even the justified kind,” he added, gaze once more sweeping appreciatively over every inch of Brad’s frame. “But I’m curious, Sergeant; why choose me?”

Brad blinked at him, and wondered when he’d told the man that he was military. Or was it just that obvious?

“Why not choose you?” he replied, aiming for a dismissive tone and probably only hitting “petulant.” Christ, he was drunk.

“Come, come, Brad, there must be a reason,” the man chided him cheerfully. “Since I think we can both agree that you could have any bloke in this place for the price of a beer and your lovely American smile. So why me? Spill it now, there’s a good chap. Otherwise I’m afraid this won’t be getting very far.”

“Is that so,” Brad said. This might have been a more intimidating riposte if he hadn’t swayed a little in the middle of saying it.

“It is incredibly so, sorry to say,” the man told him. “I always insist on complete honesty from all my clients. Works so much better that way, trust me.”

“‘Clients,’” Brad repeated, slowly. “You’re a whore?”

Far from taking offense, the man threw his head back and laughed merrily. Somewhere beneath the buzzing, glassy haze the whiskey had thrown over everything, Brad was vaguely aware that the sound of the man’s laugh made his skin crawl, like the whisper-thin sensation of a spider alighting on your skin in the dark, so delicately that you can’t even be sure it’s there.

“A whore?” the man said, still chuckling. “In the sense that all businessmen are whores, I suppose so!” He chuckled again and took a sip of his drink.

“I provide services, Brad,” he said, kindly, as one might when explaining things to a slightly slow child. “In return for a price. Just like any merchant the world over. If that makes me a whore,” and he winked, “then so be it. I’m comfortable with any number of labels, really.”

He glanced at his watch, and tutted. “I am on a bit of a schedule, though, so we really do need to be moving this along. So what do you say, hmm? Interested?”

Brad should have left it there. He should have said “fuck this shit”, and walked out. He should have gone back to his hotel room, jacked off and slept until the hangover kicked in, and everything would have been okay. He should have.

He looked the man over one more time, licked his lips, and asked, “What kind of services?”

And the man smiled.

Brad’s alcohol haze suddenly intensified tenfold, as if it were all hitting him at once, even though he’d stopped drinking at least an hour ago. Sight, sound, everything; all his senses were slipping away into the formless, humming fog of impending blackout. Dimly, as through a receding tunnel, he heard the man’s voice say, gleeful:

“Oh, Brad. What _fun_ we’re going to have.”


	4. Chapter 4

“That’s the last thing I remember of the night,” Brad said. He looked down at his whiskey with sudden distaste, and set it aside.

“When I woke up,” he said, “I wasn’t in England anymore.” He took a breath. “And I wasn’t a man anymore, either.”

Nate tilted his head at him, wearing the same intent frown of concentration Brad had seen on him countless times in Iraq, the one that said he was processing yet another piece of insane intel on yet another unbelievable situation, and deciding how to incorporate and respond to it. Well, this sure as fuck qualified on both counts, didn’t it?

“Where were you?” he asked. Breaking it down into manageable data, arranging the picture of the AO. Old habits die hard, apparently, and Brad loved him all the more for treating this like any other op.

“Oceanside,” he replied.

Nate blinked. “You woke up in California?”

“Trust me, I have no idea how the fuck either,” Brad said. “But I woke up on the floor of the kitchen in my own house. I suppose I should thank fucking God I hadn’t sublet the place while I was gone.” He swallowed. “I was – I wasn’t wearing any clothes, either.”

Nate looked at him sharply, but Brad couldn’t meet his eyes for this part. “I looked down and – and saw, and I’m pretty sure I fucking screamed like a – well.” He tried to chuckle, but the result was dismal, and he winced involuntarily. “I don’t, uh, I don’t remember the next few hours so much.” And what he did remember, he had no intention of sharing. Ever.

“Jesus, Brad,” Nate said, hushed. “I can’t even imagine…” He trailed off, and Brad saw his hand make an abortive move in Brad’s direction. Brad wanted Nate to touch him so badly he could taste it, but knew if Nate did it right now he would probably break right the fuck down and disgrace himself for all time, so he made sure not to acknowledge it.

Instead he went on, “I – eventually I pulled my shit together, somewhat, put on some clothes, even though nothing fit anymore, and I tried to figure out what the fuck to do next. And then I found the letter.”

“Letter?”

“Yeah,” Brad said, bitterly. “The fucker left me a little _note_. It was on the floor of the kitchen too. Probably had been right next to my head, but I was hardly – anyway, it was there.”

“What did it say?” Nate asked.

For answer, Brad rose and went to his duffel on the dresser next to the TV, and pulled it out. He handed it to Nate and flung himself back into his own chair, watching as Nate examined the thing before unfolding it.

“This is vellum,” he remarked, thoughtfully, stroking a finger along a crease.

Was it? Brad shrugged. “If you say so.” Of course Nate would know what fucking _vellum_ looked like.

Nate unfolded the letter and blinked a moment at the elegant calligraphy of the script inside before actually reading it. Brad knew the words inside out and backwards by now:

 

_Dear Brad,_

_As ordered. I do hope your Purchase is to your Satisfaction. I know it is not perhaps Precisely what we Discussed, but I feel certain you will find it most Effective in assisting you to achieve your Stated Goal, if correctly employed._

_As per our Agreement, I have provided the Means; the Execution is up to you. I have the Utmost Faith that you are up to the Challenge, dear boy._

_Please treat your Purchase with care, as unfortunately I cannot accept Returns or Exchanges at this time. I apologize for any Inconvenience this may cause you. However, you may take Comfort in the Knowledge that the Revised Terms of our Agreement clear you of any remaining Debt on your Purchase; I consider myself Paid in Full. I have no doubt this News will come as a great Relief to you._

_And if it doesn’t… Well. Let’s just say, it ought to._

_It was a Pleasure and a Privilege to work with you, Sergeant Colbert. I wish you Nothing but the Best of Luck in all your future Endeavors._

The letter was unsigned.

Nate read it twice, and then said, “What the fuck.”

“That pretty much sums it up, yeah,” Brad said. His fists clenched involuntarily. _If I ever see that smug, lying sack of shit again…_

But he never would, he was sure of it. _I cannot accept Returns or Exchanges_. He clamped down hard on a sudden surge of despair.

Nate gave him a worried look, but mercifully decided to stick to practicalities. “And you don’t remember anything about this agreement he claims you made?”

Brad shook his head. “No. And believe me, I gave myself a fucking migraine trying.”

“I believe you,” Nate said. He looked at the letter again. “‘Stated goal,’” he murmured. “What the hell ‘goal’ could you have told him about that would have led to…”

He trailed off, and Brad supplied, “To making me a fucking _woman_ , you mean?” He didn’t even try to keep the bitter anger out of his tone this time.

Nate winced. “Well. Yes.”

“Ray and I discussed that,” Brad said. “At length,” he added, sourly.

Nate looked momentarily surprised, evidently having forgotten about that. “Right, you… told Ray,” he said, cautiously. He was trying so hard not to sound judgmental that Brad snorted, amused despite himself.

“You shouldn’t underestimate our Joshua Ray, sir,” he told Nate, in mock reproof. “Person’s crazy, but – ” Brad shook his head, as ever at a loss to tabulate the uniqueness that was Ray Person. “Well, he’s crazy. And that was exactly why I figured that if anyone in the world was going to believe me, it would be him.”

_And besides_ , he didn’t add, _I really, really badly needed a friend._ And Brad had never had so many of those that he could afford to be especially choosy about it.

Nate considered, watching Brad narrowly, and nodded, slowly. “I guess that makes sense,” he allowed.

“Thank you for your approval, sir,” Brad said, dryly.

Nate flushed, but a moment later his face became suffused with curiosity instead. “I admit,” he said, “I’m sort of dying to know: when Ray saw you, what did he _say_?”

 

* * *

 

Brad had been rather desperately curious about that himself, if “dread” could be said to equate to “curiosity”. But he had to get to Ray first.

Brad was extremely fortunate in that he was just paranoid enough to keep a supply of ready cash hidden in the house, because otherwise he would have been fucked. His ID, debit and credit cards – and dog tags – were either still in London with the rest of what he’d been wearing (in a heap in some alley, for all Brad knew), or they’d just vanished entirely when he’d been tossed naked on his own kitchen floor, some 5,000 miles from where he’d started, by means which Brad was resolutely not even going to attempt to contemplate.

Not that his ID or credit cards – or dog tags – would have done him much good anyway, now, but he wasn’t going to think about that either.

Luckily, though, he’d had a little over two thousand dollars squirreled away in various locations in the house, which would be sufficient for clothes, lodging and gas enough to get him to an address in Nevada, Missouri that he’d dug up on a Post-It from the disaster area that was his desk. (Brad was obsessively neat about everything but paperwork; he’d never quite worked out why.)

[“But what about your family?” Nate asked. “You could have – ”

“No,” Brad said, shortly, and whatever Nate saw in his face, he fell silent and let it go. Brad noted that Nate hadn’t even bothered to ask why Brad hadn’t gone to Camp Pendleton, and snorted to himself, quietly.]

Not that the money meant any of it had been _easy_. He had been so disoriented, still, that if it hadn’t been for a very kind saleslady at the local Target, he might not have been able to accomplish even the simple task of buying fucking _clothes_. God only knew what the saleswoman had thought, seeing Brad standing there pawing cluelessly at a rack of bras, in men’s clothing that was obviously too big for him, and possibly a few scratch marks on his face that he was not mentioning to Nate in this story, but she hadn’t asked him a thing.

She was an elderly Hispanic lady whose nametag proclaimed her to be “Juanita”, and at first she hadn’t said a word to him, in fact, just gently taken his arm and led him to a different rack of bras, which looked identical to the first rack as far as Brad could tell, but evidently weren’t. She’d pursed her lips and examined Brad’s breasts (Jesus, _breasts_ ) clinically, and then pulled three bras off their hangers and handed them to him.

“Fitting room’s over there, _querida_ ,” she’d told him then. “You try these on, pick which one fit best, _si_?” She hadn’t seemed to expect him to say anything, which was good because Brad didn’t think he’d had anything to say, right then.

The less said about how long it had taken him to figure out how to put on the bras, the better, but eventually Brad had picked the one that seemed to be the least uncomfortable, and returned to the sales desk to find that Juanita had assembled a small pile of other items for him: underwear, socks, jeans, T-shirts, and several pairs of tennis shoes. Brad had accepted the clothing selections without comment, but shaken his head at the go-fasters.

“ _Gracias, señora_ ,” he’d told her, “ _pero necesito botas_.” It was bad enough he was planning to ride his bike cross country in jeans, but there was no way he was doing it without proper boots. And it wasn’t so hard to speak as long as it was in Spanish.

She’d beamed at him, and led him to the shoe section, and it went from there. He’d finally escaped the Target almost an hour later, exhausted and wigged out, but wearing clothes and boots that basically fit him. Juanita had squeezed his arm and wished him “ _Buena suerte, cariño_ ” with a strange note of insistence in her voice. Brad didn’t know what to think about the fact that he obviously wasn’t the first woman Juanita had seen wandering around her store who’d looked like – whatever he had looked like. He’d been appalled that her kindness had nearly made him tear up, in fucking _public_. Goddamn girl hormones.

He’d had to relearn almost entirely how to ride his bike, which had made him want to beat the shit out of something. Brad thought he was probably a fair bit stronger than the average woman his size would be – it certainly looked like his Corps-trained muscle tone had carried through proportionally intact, anyway – but even so he estimated that he’d lost at least a third of the upper body strength he’d had as a man, which was a pretty big fucking deal when it came to controlling a 450-pound motorcycle at 100 miles per hour.

But he fucking figured it out, even if it meant actually going the goddamn speed limit – some of the time – and the next day he set out. He was going to get to Ray if it killed him. At this point it wasn’t even about Ray, so much as it was about having a definite objective and the means to pursue it. He would get to Ray, and then he would figure out the next thing. Thinking further than that at the moment was… inadvisable.

The trip was surreal, to say the least.

The first and weirdest thing was how quickly it stopped being weird, being in this body – as long as the differences weren’t shoved in his face, like with the bike. But by the second day it was like he – settled, somehow, and he found that his initial feeling, of constantly having something like a literal out-of-body experience, faded to a degree that was disturbing when Brad thought about it.

And he did think about it, at first; he tried to keep it foremost in his mind that he was _not_ supposed to feel comfortable with this, in any way. But when Brad forgot to remember, so to speak, that he was in the wrong body, and was just doing mundane things without particularly thinking about them, he found that his instinctive discomfort and lack of coordination disappeared – at least until he remembered again. However this transformation had been achieved (Brad obstinately refused to even think the word _magic_ ), it seemed like it was complete, in the physical sense. His body wanted to accept the change whole-heartedly; it was only in Brad’s mind that it all felt wrong.

Brad wavered for a long time over whether to find this a relief, or to find it utterly fucking terrifying.

But in the end his sense of the practical prevailed: _not_ tripping and stumbling over himself all the time, and _not_ being in a constant state of disoriented half-panic, these were good things, as was not freaking out every time he had to, say, take a piss and realize he didn’t have a dick to do it with. (Well. At least, not freaking out more than a little.)

His physical… acclimation to this body, however unsettling the possible ramifications, made him more fit, better, and more effectively able to achieve his objectives, whatever those ended up being. Therefore, he decided, he would take this dubious gift horse for what it was worth, and resolutely fail to contemplate the state of its teeth unless and until he was forced to do so.

(And if he assiduously avoided looking in mirrors unless absolutely necessary, that was fine. And if every once in a while he would reach for a glass or something, and suddenly really _see_ the slender woman’s hand there instead of his own, and then have to stay very still until the icy wave of _wrongness_ finished washing through him and he could move again without screaming or knocking everything over, then at least it only happened intermittently. Right?)

It took him two pit stops to realize why he felt so claustrophobic, which was that his personal space had apparently shrunk to almost nothing without him being consulted about it. He hadn’t really realized it, but Sergeant Brad Colbert had always been given automatic and generous space by pretty much everyone he encountered – barring guys who were actually trying to pick a fight with him, of course, not that there were many of those. But being a woman, he discovered, was apparently a standing invitation for total strangers to invade his personal bubble, to brush by him or stand too close, with or without malice aforethought. It was astonishing, the difference.

He’d never even noticed the berth people had always given him until it wasn’t there anymore. Even Juanita at Target had felt no qualms about touching him, patting him, leading him around – which maybe she _might_ have done if Brad had been a man at the time, but he rather doubted it. And of course once Brad actually recognized this phenomenon, he found he couldn’t ignore it – and it was _intensely_ annoying. Did all women have to put up with this? Jesus, no wonder they were so touchy sometimes.

What’s more, everyone was always _looking_ at him. Brad was used to being looked at with a certain amount of appreciation – particularly when in certain kinds of bars – but this was… unsettling. Mostly because so many of the lookers felt no need whatsoever to hide their ogling, even when Brad glared back; in fact, sometimes the glaring made it worse. Guys especially looked, of course, but women did too, and Brad had surprised looks of shocking hatred on some of them, and sneers of contempt from others, which kind of blew his mind. The men, on the other hand, just looked at him like a dog looks at a steak – when they weren’t actually trying to get a taste.

[“Brad,” Nate interrupted, sharply, “has anyone tried to…?” He made an indeterminate gesture, jaw clenched.

Brad gave him a look which he hoped conveyed his sense of “duh” at the question. “Of course they did,” he said. “I told them all to fuck off.”

Nate started to relax until Brad added reminiscently, “Though there was one jackass in this bar in Amarillo who just wouldn’t take no for an answer, the dumb fuck. Fucking _Texans_. He followed me out to the parking lot and tried to corner me – ”

Nate sat up straight and clenched his fists without seeming to notice he’d done it, and Brad stopped to tilt his head at him.

“Sir,” he said, trying to keep a grin off his face, “are you actually – ”

“What _happened_ , Brad?” Nate snapped, face tight with worry, and Brad tried to decide whether he found this appallingly endearing, or if it completely pissed him off.

_Both_ , he decided, and snapped back, “I broke his knee and choked him out, of course. What the fuck did you think I would do, Nate? Swoon?”

Jesus, he might be a woman right now but he was still a motherfucking Devil Dog. Did Nate really think all his warrior spirit was just _gone_ because of this? That he couldn’t even handle one drunken civilian dipshit anymore?

Brad was working himself into a real snit until he noticed Nate’s expression, which looked strangely shocked – not at Brad, he thought, but at himself. Nate wasn’t looking at him, but at his own hands, uncurling them from the fists they’d been in a moment ago.

“Right,” Nate said. “Of course, my apologies, Sergeant. That reaction was… completely inappropriate.”

He sounded almost shaken, and Brad wasn’t entirely sure why, but he _was_ sure that he agreed. Very inappropriate, dammit. He might be fucked up beyond all recognition, literally, but he could still fucking take care of himself.

“It’s fine,” he said, gruffly. It wasn’t, but Nate had apologized, and that was the best he could be expected to give, and Brad needed to let it go and get on with it. So he did.]

It hadn’t been all bad, of course. The constant leering and harassment sucked, but some of the reactions he got ranged from amusing to what Brad reluctantly admitted might even qualify as “adorable”.

Like the weedy and painfully polite teenager who’d waited on him in a diner in Elk City, Oklahoma, and had flushed a frankly alarming shade of fire-engine red every time Brad said a word to him, or even glanced his way; Brad had honestly been concerned that the kid was going to pass out at one point, and had made sure to leave a big tip as an apology. Or the fact that Brad didn’t think he had actually paid for any drink in any bar he’d walked into the entire trip. Or the cop who’d pulled him over somewhere in New Mexico, and gotten so flustered when Brad took off his helmet that he’d never even asked to see Brad’s ID – which was a lucky break, seeing as Brad didn’t have any. It was the first time in his life he’d ever gotten out of a speeding ticket, which just figured.

Still, it all added to his trepidation about what would happen when he finally saw Ray. It was one thing for total strangers to look at him and see only a relatively attractive woman –

[Nate: “ _Relatively attractive?_ ”]

– BUT, Brad didn’t know how he would handle it if – okay, _when_ Ray started slobbering all over him the moment he saw him. Hell, it was Ray; he thought it wasn’t entirely out of the question that he might actually try to hump Brad’s leg. And then Brad would have to kick the shit out of him, and that probably qualified as… not the best way to begin.

He should have known better than to think he could predict the mind of one Ray Person.

His standard taunts in Iraq aside, Brad had known that Ray didn’t _actually_ live in a trailer home, but he was still a little surprised by the neat bungalow-style house at the address on his Post-It. The house was small but well-maintained, with a swing on the porch, a trimmed, bright green lawn, and an actual white picket fence that looked recently painted. Brad observed wryly that neither of the two vehicles parked in the driveway – a Volvo and a late-model Ford F150 – were up on blocks at all.

Brad pulled his bike in behind the truck and let it idle for a moment, wondering if maybe he should have called ahead first. But what the fuck would he have said? And besides, Ray wouldn’t have known his voice now anyway.

Brad was struck, then, by a wave of something he refused to identify as panic. This had been a bad idea. He should leave, now, before anyone saw him.

But he had forgotten, constantly accompanied by it as he had been for the last three days, how loud the bike was, and his chance for escape was already gone: the front door of the house opened while Brad was still astride, and Ray himself burst out onto the porch, clad in nothing but a pair of cargo shorts and his tattoos. He was waving his arms, already yelling:

“Jeff, you asshole, turn that shit off, Sarah’s asleep!”

_Jeff?_ Brad thought, but he was already shutting the engine down. Ray stomped down the porch steps and marched toward him, still talking. “Jesus, dude, I know you don’t have the brains God gave a syphilitic wombat, but surely even _you_ can remember she’s on the night shift this week. If I get denied my Sarah sexytimes because of your retarded ass I swear I’ll – ”

He reached the edge of the driveway and stopped short, squinting at Brad, and then the bike, and then Brad again. Brad belatedly remembered he still had his helmet on.

“You’re not Jeff,” Ray stated. “Who are you?”

_Now or never_ , Brad thought, and reached up and took off the helmet.

“Hi, Ray,” he said.

He waited for a whoop or a leer, or maybe a demand for how this random woman knew his name, but other than a sharp intake of breath, Ray was – shockingly – silent. He said nothing, only stared at Brad with narrowed eyes and stepped closer.

Startled, Brad stayed still, returning Ray’s gaze as steadily as he could. He had no idea what Ray was thinking, but he could _see_ Ray’s brain churning away as he examined Brad’s face minutely, and Brad was abruptly reminded that underneath Ray’s deplorable excess of personality lay the razor sharp intellect that had made him one of the best RTOs in the Corps before he’d gotten out. But surely even Ray couldn’t figure out –

“ _Brad_?” Ray said.

Brad’s mouth dropped open in shock, and he blurted, “How the hell did you – ”

Ray’s eyes got as big as saucers. “It _is_ you? What the – ” He spluttered a moment. “Jesus fuck a monkey, Brad, you’re a chick!” he yelled, pointing at him.

“I _know_ that, Ray!” Brad shouted back. “The question is, how the bleeding fuck did _you_ know that?”

Ray opened his mouth, but then there was the sound of a door opening, and both of them turned to see a gray-haired old lady in a flowered housedress leaning out of the door of the house across the lane.

“Everything all right, Joshua?” she asked, in a cracked, quavery voice.

Ray was still looking rather like a deer in headlights, but he instantly put on a big cheery smile and waved at her. “Everything’s just fine, Mrs. Heaslip!” he called back. Still waving, he muttered in a low tone to Brad, “Get in the house, we’ll talk there.”

“Ray – ”

“Dude,” Ray hissed, “unless you want your apparently _totally fucked-up_ life story all over this town in ten minutes flat, get the fuck in the house.” He raised his voice again to Mrs. Heaslip. “Sarah says thanks for the pie, ma’am!”

Brad recognized a tactical retreat opportunity when he saw one, and hastened to park the bike and hurry up to Ray’s porch while Ray continued to shout-chat with his busybody neighbor. He looked back and saw Ray making a shooing gesture at him behind his back, so Brad pushed the door open and went inside.

Inside would have instantly clued Brad in that Ray was living with a woman even without all the talk of “Sarah” earlier; anyplace where a description of the décor would include the term “bric-a-brac” was a dead giveaway that this was no bachelor pad. Brad stood uncertainly in the middle of the living room, not sure whether he should sit down or not, until he heard Ray thumping up the porch steps, and turned to watch as Ray came in, closed the door, and locked it, pointedly.

“Christ, that woman ought to be running the CIA, I swear,” he muttered, and turned to survey Brad, hands on his hips. Brad just stared back, waiting, and after a moment Ray threw up his hands and marched past Brad to where Brad could see an entryway into the kitchen.

“Liquor’s in here, Colbert,” Ray called back, and Brad followed to find Ray digging in a cabinet. Ray pointed at the breakfast table without turning around, and Brad sat. Ray joined him a moment later with two glasses and a bottle of tequila, and poured them each a generous measure before knocking his own back without hesitation. Brad followed suit.

Ray poured them each some more, but didn’t pound this one. Instead he sat back and stared at Brad again for a few moments, his face hovering somewhere between disbelief and fascination. It was odd to see him with an expression that for once contained no hint of irony whatsoever. Brad let him look his fill, figuring it was the least he could do.

Finally, Ray blinked, coming back to himself, and said, “Yeah, so, I think this is where I inquire, in all sincerity: what the actual fuck?”

Brad ignored that to ask, “How did you know it was me?”

Ray gave him a dirty look for the evasion, and waved a hand in the air. “It was obvious,” Ray said, airily.

“Bullshit,” Brad said, flatly.

Ray raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “It was a bunch of things. First off, you called me Ray.”

Brad stared at him. “That’s your name.”

“My name is _Josh_ , Brad,” Ray corrected him. “Or Joshua, or Joshua Ray if you’re my mother on a particularly obnoxious day. The only place where I was ‘Ray’ was in the Corps.”

Brad frowned. He’d known that, of course, but he hadn’t realized the distinction was so… sharp.

“Josh is a stupid name,” Brad offered. _For you_ , he meant, and of course Ray got it, and snorted.

“Whatever, dude,” he said, unoffended. “My point is, no one besides one of my fellow Marines would call me that. And then there was your bike.”

“You recognized my bike?”

“Are you kidding? Do you have any fucking idea how much you blathered about that bike while we were in country? I could pick that thing out of a lineup, and I know jackshit about motorcycles.”

Brad felt a little miffed. He hadn’t talked about his bike _that_ much in Iraq. And he did not _blather_ about anything.

Ray smirked, as if he’d guessed what Brad was thinking, but went on, “Plus, I saw you with it at least three or four times after we got back, before I moved back home. In fact, the last time I saw you in person was on that bike. After the LT’s paddle party, remember?”

Brad did remember, even though Ray had hardly been the focus of his attention at the time. Which he’d rather regretted later; if he’d known it would be the last time he and Ray would see each other for the foreseeable future, he would have made more of an effort to commemorate it, instead of letting himself be utterly (torn up) distracted by Nate’s departure from the Corps.

“Right, we talked on the porch for a few minutes, and then I left,” Brad said.

“On that bike,” Ray agreed, “and wearing that jacket.” He gestured at Brad’s leather jacket. “Though of course it fit you a lot better the last time I saw it.”

Brad shifted. Ray was right, it didn’t fit him anymore, but Brad had had this jacket since before he’d enlisted. He’d conceded to the necessity of buying new clothes and boots for this… predicament, but some things he was just not willing to leave behind.

He shook his head. “But Ray, even so, that’s… a leap.”

Ray snorted. “A leap? That’s jumping tall buildings in a single bound, Brad. And yet, here we are. Imagine my amazement to find out I was actually fucking _right_. My brain, ladies and gentlemen. Or ladies _or_ gentlemen,” he amended, tipping his glass in Brad’s direction before drinking it down and pouring some more.

Brad eyed him. “You’re taking this awfully calmly.”

“The fuck I am,” Ray retorted. “This is just the shock phase. If I’m lucky, I’ll either be too drunk to notice when my impending case of extreme screaming meemies hits, or, oh yeah, you’ll have _explained what the chromosome-hopping fuck is going on_ and I can skip the meemies thing. Because Brad, I gotta tell ya, I am not a fan of the screaming meemies.”

“Really,” Brad said, unable to resist. “You are… anti-meemies.”

“Yes,” Ray confirmed. “They scream,” he explained, helpfully. “It’s not pleasant.”

“I can see how that would be suboptimal,” Brad agreed solemnly, trying to keep a grin off his face.

As always, just talking to Ray and dealing with his ridiculous mental diarrhea helped Brad detach from whatever insane shit they were stuck in and put it in perspective. He’d never expected to need it at home, away from the war, but if anything ever qualified more than getting shot at as “insane shit”, this was it. He wondered if he should try to explain to Ray how incredibly grateful he was to be sitting across from him at this moment, but he didn’t think he was allowed by the Guy Code to express that so blatantly.

Besides, he was pretty sure Ray got it anyway.

“Right, so since we have all reached a consensus on the essential importance of screaming meemie avoidance,” Ray said, “maybe we could get to the fucking explaining part now, hmm?”


	5. Chapter 5

“So no leg-humping, then,” Nate observed. He couldn’t decide whether to be impressed or chagrined that Ray Person had apparently taken one look at Brad and figured out what it had taken Nate an entire conversation to realize. But then, Ray knew Brad a lot better than Nate ever had. It was a strangely displeasing thought.

“None,” Brad agreed. “To my considerable surprise. Though there was the porno voiceover thing later, but he was pretty drunk by then. I should have guessed Ray’s method of dealing with shock would be… _unique_.” Nate wondered if Brad realized how much fondness for his former RTO came through in a statement he obviously meant to be exasperated, and found himself intensely glad that Brad had had someone to go to in the midst of… this.

He was pretty sure Brad had left out a lot of things in his tale thus far, but that was only to be expected. Nate was surprised, in fact, that Brad had been as forthcoming as he had. Which led Nate to believe that, in true Marine style, what Brad had actually said didn’t even come close to portraying how bad the experience had really been for him.

_Jesus, I can’t even imagine_ , Nate thought. He’d already said that, but it bore repeating. With an effort he hauled his thoughts back on track.

“So what were Ray’s thoughts on the letter?” he asked.

Brad gave him an odd, sidewise look, like Nate was confusing him. Or surprising him.

“What?” Nate said.

“I’m just – ” Brad shook his head. “You and Ray. This whole thing is just – _psychotic_ , and you both are so – ” He makes a flippant “whatever” gesture.

“Believe me, Brad,” Nate said dryly, “there is no – ” and he imitated Brad’s hand-flip, “ – about this. I can’t speak for Ray, of course, but personally I plan to have a full-scale existential crisis about what all this implies about the world as soon as my schedule is clear. Right now, though,” and he raised his eyebrows at Brad, “I have more important priorities.”

Brad’s lips quirked a bit. “Right. I was just surprised by it, is all.”

Nate gave him a narrow look. That was… an un-Brad-like response. “I’m sure you were,” Nate said, just to be saying something, and then it hit him, and he added, “You’re also avoiding my question.”

Brad looked up sharply, and then away, and Nate knew he’d struck home.

“What is it you don’t want to tell me, Brad?” he asked, simply. A flicker of an idea pushed its way up from the depths of his mind, but Nate shoved it back down. Facts, not… suspicion.

Brad made a half-hearted move toward his whiskey glass, but then abandoned it for an intense study of his own hands, so much more fine-boned and slender than they had been, pressed together before her.

“We argued about the letter for… a long time,” Brad said, finally. “Most of it hinged on what possible thing I could have wanted that could be achieved by being made into – this.” He gestured at himself, and then smiled a little sourly. “Ray campaigned for a while for the idea that I secretly wanted to be on the cover of _Sports Illustrated_ ’s swimsuit issue, but I threatened to take the tequila away, so he shut up.”

Nate snorted in amusement, though the most interesting part of that idea was that, from what Nate could see, the ambition wouldn’t have been all that farfetched. _Focus_ , he rebuked himself, snatching his gaze back up to Brad’s face.

“In the end,” Brad said, with an odd formality, “we based our decision on the intel of the meeting we had available, in addition to some… personal revelations. Revelations which I was rather irritated to discover Ray was already aware of,” Brad added, grumpily.

Nate waited a moment, but Brad failed to elaborate. Nate was about to push him on it, but his attention was caught by Brad’s phrasing: _the intel of the meeting we had available_. Meaning the part Brad actually remembered, which he had already recounted to Nate.

Nate didn’t have eidetic recall, but if OCS plus six years of Ivy League education didn’t drastically improve one’s memory skills, nothing would. He mentally reviewed what Brad had said about his encounter with the man, and felt his eyes widen as he realized what Brad had left out of his account.

“‘Why choose me?’” he quoted, without quite meaning to speak aloud, and saw Brad stiffen. There it was.

“You didn’t say, did you,” Nate said. “He asked you why you chose him in particular, but you didn’t answer.”

It wasn’t really a question, but Brad answered anyway. “No,” Brad said, “I didn’t.” His voice sounded… resigned.

“So why did you choose him, Brad?”

Brad closed his eyes a moment. “He reminded me of someone. In retrospect,” he added, not quite bitterly, “I’m sure that it was deliberate.”

They had circled to the heart of the matter, Nate knew, and he hesitated before finally asking, quietly, “Who did he remind you of, Brad?”

“He was tall,” Brad said. “Not quite as tall as me, but tall. Pale, with hair that looked red in some light, blond in others.” He turned to look at Nate, then. “Green eyes.”

Time hung suspended, for a space that could have been a few seconds or a year for all Nate could tell, as he heard confirmed what he had known, really, since Brad had begun this story.

No, since the bar, when he had realized who Brad was.

It wasn’t a shock, and yet it was. _You’d think I would have reached my quota for number of “holy shit” moments in one night_ , Nate thought to himself. But not so much, apparently.

It didn’t need to be said, but it also did, so Nate said it. “He reminded you of me.”

Brad’s eyes flicked to the right, in the enlisted man’s trademark thousand-yard stare, but then he seemed to realize what he was doing, and visibly forced himself to meet Nate’s gaze again.

“Yes,” he said, simply, and waited, and Nate found that he was the one who had to look away.

He stood up, in fact, without entirely intending to do so, and took a couple of steps away from the table. He felt like he should be having some kind of definite response to what Brad was telling him, whether it be disgust or delight or indifference or flattery or… or _something_ , but his mind was stuck in a loop, bouncing back and forth between the past and the present without seeming to be able to generate an emotion to go with any of it.

_He reminded you of me._ A beautiful woman in a bar, darting forward to brush her lips against his. A grime-covered sergeant in a dark and hostile desert, looking at him with terrifying trust, and maybe something else he should have recognized at the time, but didn’t. _Sir, your leadership is the only thing I have absolute confidence in._

_I wanted to fuck him._

_I have no fucking clue what I’m doing here, sir._

_You and me both_ , Nate replied, silently.

“Brad,” Nate began, and stopped. He hadn’t worked out what was going to follow that, yet, but Brad didn’t give him a chance anyway.

“It’s all right, sir,” Brad said, and fuck if he didn’t sound suddenly _brisk_. The change in tone was so sharp that Nate swung around to look at him in surprise.

Brad’s expression was as impersonal as his voice, his abruptly dispassionate gaze nominally pointed in the direction of Nate’s face but somehow failing to meet his eyes. “It was Ray’s idea, really, so I shouldn’t be surprised that it was a bad one. He’d figured out, you see, that I’d – ” the briefest of pauses here, almost undetectable, “ – found you attractive, once, so he suggested that maybe that was it, a chance to purge an old silly fantasy.”

Brad laughed, and it was an ugly sound, cutting and sarcastic. “I probably wasn’t even the only one in theater who fantasized about fucking their CO, at that. Literally or otherwise.”

Nate just stared at him, dumbfounded at the casually cruel inflection of this last. Brad stood, so suddenly that Nate took an instinctive half step back, swept the letter up from the table where Nate had left it, and strode over to stuff it back into his duffel.

“Like I said,” Brad continued, coolly, as if the whole thing was of minor importance, really, “it was a stupid idea. I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind a nice anonymous fuck with a chick in a bar, but in retrospect I see how disrespectful that was to you, and I’m sorry you had to find out how I misrepresented myself to you in this manner.”

He walked to the door of the hotel room and swiftly undid the chainlock and the deadbolt, opening the door to the hall beyond. He stood there, pointedly holding it open, as if he thought Nate would march right through it, just like that.

Nate became aware that his mouth was hanging slightly open, and shut it with a click. “Brad,” he floundered, “What are you – ”

“Don’t worry about it, sir,” Brad cut him off, seeming impatient. “I’ll figure it out eventually. I would have preferred not to end our association this way, but that’s on me. Thank you for your help, but I’ve taken up more than enough of your time, and I’m sure there are other places you’d rather be.”

The vibe of _just get the fuck out already_ emanating off him was almost palpable. It was so strong, in fact, that Nate found himself taking a couple of steps toward the door before he even realized what he was doing, and had to pull himself up short.

What the fuck had just happened?

Nate didn’t know, so he said it out loud: “What the fuck just happened, Brad?”

Brad gritted his teeth. “I’m giving you the opportunity of a graceful exit, sir,” he said, tightly. “I suggest you take it.”

Nate stared at him, but Brad refused to meet his eyes, and all at once Nate realized what this was. This wasn’t a sudden bout of insanity; it was a _preemptive strike_. A classic strategy: deny the possibility of attack, by attacking first instead.

_Hurt the other guy, before he can hurt you._

Nate had speculated earlier that Brad’s engagement story was a lie, but he was suddenly sure that, possible genders of the respective parties aside, that story had been at least partially absolutely true. All the best lies have an element of truth, don’t they, and Nate would bet money that someone at some point had fucked Brad over so hard that, to him, rejection wasn’t merely a possibility, but the single most likely outcome of any given relationship. All it had taken was Nate’s _hesitation_ , and Brad had called it, assumed the worst and moved to minimize the damage. The best defense being a good offense, and all.

Nate knew that according to the script, he was supposed to get angry now. He was supposed to get angry and defensive about the… the gay panic or whatever Brad thought he was in the throes of right now, and gratefully take the opportunity to get away from Brad and his… everything, all this, and leave it behind and forget about it.

And be just one more person who had abandoned Brad. Who’d told him, implicitly or explicitly, that he wasn’t worth staying for.

_Well, fuck_ that _noise_ , Nate thought.

Nate strode over to the door, pulled it out of Brad’s hand, and swept it closed, just short of a slam. Brad gave him a look caught somewhere between fury and shock, and opened his mouth.

No, _her_ mouth, Nate decided. The mouth he’d been wanting to capture since the moment he’d seen it in the bar, and finding out who it really belonged to, if Nate was going to be honest with himself, hadn’t lessened that want in the slightest, hadn’t changed at all the fact that Nate had been half-hard just looking at her this entire night. Nate didn’t know if that made this whole thing less fucked up or more, and right at that moment he didn’t give a shit.

If this was what Brad’s curse or whatever the hell it was called for, then so be it. Never let it be said that Nate Fick abandoned _anyone_ in their hour of need, much less Brad. Or himself.

“Your suggestion is rejected, Sergeant,” Nate told her, before Brad could say a word, and pulled Brad to him and kissed her full on the lips.


	6. Chapter 6

Brad’s head spun, and for almost five whole seconds all he could process was touch – _lips, Nate’s, on his, warm soft Jesus fuck so good_ – before he came to his senses and pushed Nate away.

Nate went easily, not resisting, as if he had been expecting the move, but whatever Brad had been going to say once they were apart (anger pain _don’t fucking mock/pity me_ ) died on his lips when he saw Nate’s eyes, heavy-lidded and dark with what could only be lust, fastened on his own mouth.

“But,” is all he managed to stutter, unable to understand what was happening. It was _over_ , all his dirty distasteful secrets on display; Nate was supposed to be _leaving_ , not kissing him, not giving him what he so desperately – and then Nate was moving forward, not touching Brad but relentlessly advancing upon his space, and Brad found himself backing up till his back hit the wall next to the door, in the unprecedented position of someone looming _over_ him, and then Nate put his hands on the wall on either side of Brad’s head, bracketing him, closing around him, and Nate leaned in, lips just a breath shy from brushing his own again, and Brad thought his knees were going to liquefy.

“Tell me you don’t want this,” Nate whispered, breath ghosting across Brad’s lips, “and I’ll stop. But either way, Brad, there is no fucking way I’m walking away from you, and you’d better get used to the idea.”

Brad’s whole _being_ shuddered, with shock and disbelief and aching, twisting want, but surely this couldn’t – “Nate, you don’t have to – I won’t – ”

Nate moved back enough to take one hand off the wall to cup Brad’s cheek instead, and Brad’s ability to make coherent words came to a momentary end. “I know I don’t have to,” Nate said, softly, eyes tracing over Brad’s features. “But I want to.”

Brad longed with every fiber to leave it there and just _take_ what he had wanted for so long, no matter how insane the way had become to get it, but he had to know.

“Because I’m a woman right now?” he asked, swallowing thickly. “Because – because you’re taking one for the team?”

That wasn’t the way he’d meant to phrase it, but he saw that Nate understood what he’d meant: _are you doing this just because of the curse?_

Nate’s lips pursed in momentary frustration, and Brad actually _saw_ him make the decision not to prevaricate. “That’s part of it, yes,” he said, reluctantly. “ _But_ ,” he added firmly, holding Brad’s face still when Brad went to pull away, “only part of it, Brad. I want to help you, but I also want to do this because – because I want to do this. And because you want to do this. And because,” he concluded, green eyes intent upon Brad’s own, as if he were stressing a point, “you’re worth doing it for.”

He leaned in again, not to kiss but to press his forehead to Brad’s. Brad’s eyes slid shut involuntarily, and his fucking girl hormones betrayed him again by making tears prick at the back of his eyes. He breathed in, smelling whiskey and aftershave and something that he knew was just _Nate_ , surrounding him and enfolding him – and even now protecting his men, however he had to, no matter the cost to himself. And Brad knew that this was going to end badly, and that it would fucking cut him to pieces when it did, and that he didn’t deserve even this much.

And he knew that he was going to take it anyway. Because Brad Colbert had always been and would always be love’s bitch; the only difference this time was that it was literal.

“This is so fucked up,” he heard himself say, shakily. Nate snorted amused agreement, breath puffing against Brad’s face.

“Situation normal, then,” he said, wryly, and tilted his head to lay a kiss at the corner of Brad’s eye. Brad sucked in an involuntary breath, feeling like every inch of his skin was a live wire, sparking wildly at the slightest touch. Nate stilled a moment in response, lips still pressed to Brad’s skin, one hand still cupped along his cheek, and then carefully trailed his mouth down over Brad’s other cheek, just barely touching, until his lips rested, light as a feather, over Brad’s own.

The lightness of it was maddening, and Brad held rock still, waiting for Nate to do more, but Nate didn’t move, and Brad realized Nate was waiting for Brad to make the next move. Letting him dictate the pace.

_Just as if I really were the girl_ , some part of him couldn’t help noting, but the larger majority of him was far more concerned with making that kiss real. For better or worse, he was done with waiting, and Brad brought one hand up to grasp the back of Nate’s neck and pull him forward, tilted his own head and opened his mouth, and from there all bets were off.

 

* * *

 

Nate’s memory of the next few moments was a blurred collection of lips and tongues and hands and firm, smooth flesh, yielding against his own. He remembered moving his hips against hers, pushing her against the wall, and the throaty moan that had evoked, remembered her throwing her head back, an irresistible invitation for Nate to lean in and bury his face between the fall of her hair and the exquisite curve where neck met shoulder, nuzzling and licking his way to her ear, making her gasp and writhe against him, rubbing his jeans over his cock.

He was so hard it hurt, and he pushed his hands under her shirt and up, pulling it over her head in one move, and she flung it aside and buried her hands in his hair, pulling him in for another spine-melting kiss, tongues thrusting and sliding against each other while he slid his own hands over smooth hot skin around to her back, fumbling for the clasp of her bra. He let out a groan of triumph when it snapped open under his fingers and he felt her breasts fall free, loose and heavy against his chest. He pulled the interfering fabric away, sliding it down her arms, and filled one palm with that delicious soft weight, kissing her all the while.

Then he felt her freeze against him. Nate hastily pulled away to see what was wrong, and saw that she – that Brad was looking down at where his hand cupped her – _his_ breast, and thought, _shit_.

“Are you – ” he said, and barely recognized his own voice, raspy and low. “Should I not…?” He would stop if Brad wanted him to, but oh, how he wanted to keep going…

Brad’s eyes flicked to his face and seemed startled again at whatever he saw there, before his gaze went back to where Nate cupped him, drawn as if to a lodestone. “I, uh,” he said, and her voice was hoarse too, slid down from mezzo to contralto. “It’s just…”

_Weird_ , Nate finished for him mentally, and moved to draw his hand away. But in doing so, he inadvertently brushed his thumb across the nipple, and Brad sucked in a shocked, stuttery gasp as the nipple instantly hardened to a small rosy nub, and Nate sort of lost his mind at the sight and without the slightest conscious volition bent his head to take it into his mouth.

Brad flung his head back hard enough to _thunk_ it against the wall behind her. “Oh, Jesus _fuck_ ,” she cursed on a shaky indrawn breath, all weirdness apparently utterly forgotten, and dug her fingers into Nate’s hair as he suckled and gently bit at her. “Oh, my God, that’s, fuck, God,” she mumbled incoherently, and Nate broke off just long enough to grin a bit in triumph, and switch to the other breast, laving it with his tongue before taking it in to suck and massage it with his lips, and Brad’s mumbling was replaced with broken, breathy moans that Nate thought might actually drive him insane, they were so hot.

She took one hand away from his hair then, and a moment later Nate felt her fingers fumbling at the fly of his jeans, unbuttoning them, and thought _oh fuck yes_ , and renewed his efforts at her breasts, concentrating on wringing more of those moans out of her even as she opened his fly with shocking deftness, all things considered, and slid her hand inside to cup it over his dick, over his boxers.

Nate heard himself let out a guttural sound that sounded almost like he’d been punched, as the touch of her hand seemed to make him, impossibly, even harder, and he broke off from her nipple to straighten and take her lips again, grinding himself against her hand, groaning even as he thrust his tongue rhythmically into her mouth, subconsciously matching the movements of his hips.

He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been this turned on just by getting to second base. If he didn’t stop soon he was going to damn well come in his pants, and that was not going to fucking happen tonight, so he broke the kiss and reached down and took her hand away from his dick. Brad let out a whine of protest, but it choked off when he took that hand and her other hand too and pushed them back to pin them by her wrists against the wall on either side of her head, and insinuated his thigh between hers so that it rubbed directly on her crotch.

She fucking _mewled_ then, and rode his thigh shamelessly, grinding herself down on him just as he had on her, and Nate saw her eyes roll back in her head before he leaned forward to breathe into her ear. 

“I want to put my tongue in you,” he whispered, hardly even knowing what he was saying but assured that it was the dead truth. “Want to lick you till you come. Can I?”

“ _Fuuuck_ ,” she breathed, “oh, fuck, I – ” she broke off, gasping for breath as if she’d run for miles, and just nodded, and Nate thought _oh thank God_. He ached to taste her.

Without thinking, then, Nate released her wrists to slide his arms under her thighs and hoist her up, a move he’d done any number of times with girls when there was a fair amount of distance to cover to get to the bed, but the solidity of her tall and firmly muscled mass abruptly reminded him that this was not just a girl but _Brad_ , and that he might not appreciate Nate carrying him like a – well, like a girl.

He glanced up and saw the surprise on Brad’s face, and froze, uncertain whether he should put Brad down, or what. Brad stared at him a moment, and then abruptly solved the problem by winding arms and legs both around him and bringing their mouths back together, and Nate’s groan was just as much relief that he hadn’t fucked up as it was arousal. Though it was plenty of that, too.

Attention mostly on the obscene things Brad’s tongue was doing to his mouth, Nate’s progress to the bed was not the most graceful thing ever, but he only cared that they got there. He lowered her down onto the bed and draped himself over her so that both their legs still hung off the end of the mattress to the floor, and managed to do it without breaking their kiss once, for which he was distantly proud of himself.

Her hands roamed over his back and then began tugging at the fabric of his shirt. “Off,” she pulled away from his mouth to say thickly, but Nate was busy kissing her neck then and ignored her. She tugged some more. “ _Off_ ,” she insisted, and Nate reluctantly broke off long enough to prop himself first on one arm and then the other, to yank his shirt off and toss it somewhere.

That done, he was about to get back to the very serious business of exploring every inch of her neck with his tongue, but Brad had other ideas, and the moment Nate’s shirt was off she wrapped one leg around his and flipped them both so that she was on top, in a show of strength that Nate found shocking for a second until he remembered.

It wasn’t that he _forgot_ , precisely, but it was just that there were breasts, and curves, and that unmistakable scent of _woman_ everywhere, drowning his conscious thought processes in a haze of delicious desire, and remembering seemed less important than tasting all of her, taking all of her, and what had he been thinking about again?

Whatever it was, it surely couldn’t be more important than watching her gloriously bare torso bend over him as she straddled his hips. Her breasts swayed tantalizingly as she ran her hands over his stomach and chest, luxuriously tracing the contours of the muscle definition Nate had admittedly put a fair amount of work into keeping up even after his departure from the Corps, and he had never been more glad of it than at this moment, watching her admire it.

Brad’s eyes looked drugged, black pupils almost drowning the blue as they wandered over his body just as much as her hands were doing, seeming to drink him in through sight and touch, and there was nothing more arousing, Nate thought, than seeing that someone else found you desirable. Then she bent abruptly down to drag the flat of her tongue over one of his nipples, and Nate arched his back without volition into the sensation.

“Ah, fuck, Brad,” he groaned, and maybe the male name should have tasted strange on his tongue, but it was all of a piece now, and trying to keep up the differentiation in his mind was just ridiculous and he wasn’t doing it anymore, if he ever had been.

Brad froze a moment, and then suddenly moved with almost frantic haste, sliding off Nate’s legs to the floor and tugging his shoes and socks off before reaching up to his waist, pulling his jeans and boxers together down and off him. Nate barely had a moment to process the fact that he was suddenly naked before she pushed his thighs apart, knelt between them, and with no further ado swallowed his cock down to the root.

Nate couldn’t have stopped the yell that ripped out of him then if he’d wanted to. Brad’s mouth enveloped him, hot and wet and there was suction and tongue and _Jesus Christ_ , and the only even vaguely coherent thought that crossed Nate’s mind as he panted and tried desperately not to simply fuck Brad’s face was a lack of surprise at finding that Brad was as exceedingly competent at sucking cock as he was at everything Nate had ever seen him do.

But there was something he had wanted to do, it was – _God_ , that felt amazing – something he’d said… oh, right.

“Brad, wait, stop,” he groaned, sitting up and pushing gently at Brad’s shoulders until she sat back on her heels, letting him slide from her lips reluctantly. His cock was all shiny and slick from her spit, and Nate almost forgot why he had wanted her to stop at all at the sight, because _holy fuck_.

“What,” she said, wiping her lips and looking dazed, “Why’d you…” Her look started to slide into apprehension. “Did you not like – ”

Nate almost hurt himself in his haste to bend forward and kiss her, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her up and forward before he broke the kiss. “No, no, God, that was fucking amazing,” he assured her, interspersing quick sucking kisses to her jaw and neck with his words. “I just – I don’t want it to be over that quick, okay?”

Brad nodded, still looking a little unsure, but she slid her arms around his neck and kissed him again, slowly, still on her knees between his legs, and Nate could taste himself on her tongue. Nate moved his hand down to her belly, where he popped the button on her jeans and pulled the zipper down. Brad made a small sound into his mouth, and Nate slid his hand down into her panties.

Brad pulled her mouth away to gasp, and Nate whispered, “Besides, it’s your turn.” He pushed two fingers into slick, soft heat, and Brad’s gasp spun into a high-pitched moan that was almost a yelp.

He moved his fingers, massaging the hot slippery-wet folds of her clit, and had to spread his hand across her back to keep her upright as she arched back soundlessly, her mouth open in an “O” that seemed almost as much in shock as it was in pleasure. Which put her breasts right there, and Nate couldn’t resist bending forward enough to take one nipple into his mouth again as he continued to move his fingers in her folds, circling and rubbing, and abruptly just like that Brad was shaking and moaning in his arms, coming hard.

Nate tried not to feel _too_ self-satisfied, because they had a long way to go yet. If he was doing this he was doing it _right_.

 

* * *

 

Brad felt like he was being turned inside out. Coming as a woman was both very similar to and yet nothing at _all_ like having an orgasm as a man, and again there was that vaguely unsettling weirdness of how weird it _wasn’t_ – the niggling worry over the fact that the things Nate was doing to him felt so very right even though the parts were all wrong. But right now, Brad decided, the relief of that won unequivocally over anything else, because fuck if he didn’t deserve to be able to enjoy _something_ in all this madness.

And oh, how he was enjoying it.

He was dimly aware that Nate had somehow gotten him off the floor and onto the bed, chuckling softly, and was now gently tugging off the rest of his clothes, and that Brad should probably be helping with all that, but he couldn’t seem to do anything at the moment but be limp and marvel at how _fucking amazing_ that had felt.

Not just the orgasm, but how – Jesus, this was embarrassing, but how Nate was taking _care_ of him, being so solicitous and protective of him. And Brad knew that he should probably be having a problem with this, because he would bet all the tea in England that this was how Nate was with all the girls he slept with, and Brad was _not actually a fucking girl_ and Nate shouldn’t –

And then Nate pulled his soaked underwear down and off his legs, flinging them on the floor, and promptly wormed his way up between Brad’s legs, spreading them with a hand on either inner thigh, and ran the flat of his tongue up the length of his pussy, and all coherent thought processes were utterly derailed, because fucking _fuck_ how could that feel even better than what Nate had already done?

Brad tried to do something for the next few minutes besides writhe and moan like something out of a cheap porno, but Nate’s tongue was flicking and massaging and laving at skin that seemed to be nothing but sparking nerve ends of pleasure, and Brad felt a fresh building of that delicious inner pressure and realized that holy crap, he could possibly have like three or four of these things. And then he felt Nate slide a long finger into him, and there was no burn, no resistance, just slick yielding heat, and Nate’s tongue flicked again over his clit and Brad almost bent double, his whole upper body coming up off the mattress as his second orgasm hit out of nowhere and _holy fucking shit_.

“Holy fucking shit,” he breathed, aloud, when the shaking finally passed, flopping back onto the bed. He looked down the length of his body to see Nate looking back up at him, face all shiny and wet (with _him_ , Brad realized) and a grin on his face that was so smug Brad almost rolled his eyes. But only almost, because, again, _holy fucking shit_.

Nate crawled up Brad’s body and to the side so that he wasn’t directly on top of him, and Brad grabbed his head as soon as it was in range to bring Nate’s lips to his, tasting his own – Jesus, his own pussy on Nate’s lips and tongue, and he wasn’t sure what to do with that, but then Nate moved his hand, thrusting gently, and it was only then that Brad realized Nate’s finger was still inside him as the sensation made him gasp.

“God,” Brad said, feeling how _odd_ that felt, not bad but odd, and Nate pulled back and watched his face a moment before nuzzling into Brad’s neck again.

“We don’t have to go any further if you don’t want to,” Nate said in his ear, all serious and earnest and fucking _noble_ even as Brad felt how rock hard he was against Brad’s hip, he must be _dying_ by this point, and Brad was abruptly vastly irritated, because there was solicitousness, and then there was treating Brad like a goddamn sixteen-year-old virgin on prom night, and enough was enough.

“Nathaniel Fick,” Brad said, flatly, “if your cock is not fucking me straight through this mattress in the next two minutes I will fucking beat you senseless.”

Nate went still a moment against him, and then Brad felt his lips spread in what he was sure was an absolutely wicked smile against Brad’s neck. “Solid copy, Sergeant,” he murmured, lifting his head just long enough to aim that gorgeous grin at Brad for a heart-stopping moment, before sliding his finger out (Brad rolled his hips involuntarily at the sensation) and pushing himself off the bed.

Brad laid back and enjoyed the view as Nate bent to paw through the tangle of clothes to find his wallet. Brad considered making a mocking comment about the practice of keeping condoms in one’s wallet, but decided he was too busy watching that lovely erect cock bob before him, and wonder what it would feel like when it was inside of him. Would it be very different from having one up the ass? Brad was willing to bet, based on the last twenty minutes or so, that the answer was both yes and no.

There were other things his brain thought he should probably be thinking about, worries and apprehensions that kept trying to sneak in and kill the pleasantly buzzing haze of anticipation he was currently floating in, but Brad battered them all down like he was in a game of mental Whack-a-Mole, because he was going to goddamn well live in this moment where Nate Fick was about to fuck him, and he was going to goddamn well enjoy it, and right now everything else could just fuck the hell off.

Nate finally extracted a wrapped condom from his wallet and straightened, and Brad scrambled to the end of the bed to snatch it out of his hands. Nate gave him a startled look that melted into one of anticipation as Brad grabbed Nate’s hips and roughly positioned him in front of Brad before ripping the condom open and rolling it down Nate’s cock, enjoying how Nate shivered and groaned at the move, and how his hands came up to cradle Brad’s head, stroking his hair.

Once done, Brad bestowed a kiss on the very tip of Nate’s now sheathed and painfully erect cock, almost laughing at how it jerked at the touch, and looked up at Nate’s face, which was turned down to watch him, eyes dark and blown, lids at half mast.

“Now,” Brad said, aware of how husky his voice sounded even in the female register, “I want you to fuck me.”

Nate nodded distractedly, eyes fastened on Brad’s mouth, and moved with Brad, crawling over him as Brad scooted backwards to the head of the bed. Brad stopped when his head hit the pillows and lay back, waiting. Nate hovered over him a moment, still on hands and knees, bracketing Brad’s body, and just _looked_ for a long moment. Brad wondered what Nate was seeing, and then decided he didn’t want to think about it, and just arched his back, watching how Nate’s eyes got even darker at the sight, and reached up to pull him down so their lips and bodies sank down together into the softness of the bed.

He hadn’t been sure whether he would be able to negotiate this, whether he would know what to do, but when he felt the tip of Nate’s cock nudging against him, his hips tilted up, seemingly of their own accord, and suddenly it was right there at his entrance, pushing against him. Brad froze, unconsciously bracing himself to be breached, but that made Nate freeze too.

“Are you – ?” Nate started, a worried note in his voice.

“No,” Brad said, “no, I’m good, just – go, do it.”

“It might – ” Nate began again. _Hurt_ , he was going to say.

“Don’t care,” Brad told him, breathlessly, and he didn’t. “Do it.”

Nate nodded again, and _pushed_ , and Brad felt his eyes open wide as Nate’s cock slid inside him in one smooth thrust, filling him up to the hilt.

That sense of _fullness_ , of glorious intrusion, was different and yet the same, as he’d suspected. And it did hurt, but not nearly as badly as it could have, and Brad had definitely experienced much worse pain in his life. This, this was nothing. And Nate was helping by holding completely still, watching Brad closely, waiting for him to adjust even though it had to be killing him not to move. Brad noticed, peripherally, the muscles in Nate’s arms trembling as he held himself rock steady over Brad, so as not to crush him, and experienced a wave of love for him that was almost blinding in its intensity.

“Okay?” Nate asked, almost succeeding in masking the strain in his voice, and Brad was helpless to do anything but smile up at him and nod.

“Yes, okay,” he said, and brought his knees up on either side of Nate’s hips, cradling him. Nate made a sound in the back of his throat as the move caused him to slip a little further inside Brad, and abruptly nothing in the world was more important than that Brad feel Nate move inside him, now.

“Go,” he whispered to Nate, rolling his hips, “go, go, go,” and then Nate was moving, thrusting inside him, and Brad’s hips rose to meet him for every thrust, and it was the sound of skin slapping on skin and gasping breaths and Brad’s moans and Nate panting nonsense profanity into his ear as his cock stroked in and out, filling him, making him whole, and Brad arched his back and just let go, riding the wave of sensation until his third orgasm slammed into him like a freight train, with such force Brad fair _sobbed_ as it hit, and Nate let out one last ground-out groan of “ _Fuck_ ” as Brad’s body clenched and fluttered around his cock, and plunged deep inside one last time and followed suit, burying his face in Brad’s neck as he came and came.

 

* * *

 

After, Brad drifted for a while, coming down slowly, glorying in Nate’s weight heavy upon him, feeling his cock slowly soften inside him and listening to their mingled breaths. He would be happy to never move again, he thought.

He felt… content, solid, _real_ , for the first time since he had woken up on his kitchen floor in Oceanside and this whole nightmare had started. For once both his body and his brain had been in sync on what they wanted, and it had been glorious. It was a fleeting thing, this euphoria, he knew, and all too soon the reality – or unreality, rather – of his situation would reassert itself, but just for this moment he clung to it, clung to _Nate_ , as fiercely as he could. He would steal this moment of happiness and milk it for everything it was worth, just in case he didn’t get any more of them.

Finally, though, Nate shifted, groaning a little, and Brad let him go reluctantly, unwrapping his arms and legs from around him. He tried not to feel bereft as Nate’s spent cock slipped free; tried not to wonder if he would ever feel that sensation of Nate inside him again.

“Jesus Christ,” Nate muttered, lifting his head, and Brad braced himself for whatever he might see in Nate’s face, now that the deed was done. Nate had done his duty, after all, and Brad honestly had no clue whatsoever what he might do next. Would he just leave, or would he be a gentleman and cuddle for a while first, or…?

Nate looked at him, and Brad held himself still, waiting. Those brilliant green eyes narrowed, searching his face from inches away, and then he said, sharply, “Brad.”

“Yes?” Brad said, trying to keep his voice neutral.

“Stop being a fucking idiot,” Nate told him, and kissed him once, hard, before rolling off him and sitting up on the edge of the bed to deal with the condom.

Brad blinked at the ceiling a couple of times, trying to process this. “Excuse me?” he said.

“I’m not going anywhere, you moron,” Nate said, and then added, “except to get rid of this,” indicating the used condom. He suited action to words, tying off the condom as he padded naked into the bathroom, and Brad tried to ignore the warm feeling spreading through him, mingled with dismay that Nate could apparently read him like a fucking book, and when the fuck had _that_ happened?

Trying to regain his equilibrium, he took refuge in sarcasm. “If this is your idea of pillow talk, Captain,” he called, “I have to tell you it could use some work.”

He heard a snort from the bathroom, followed by running water and splashing. Nate was cleaning himself up, obviously. Brad stretched sore, aching-but-in-a-good-way muscles and debated whether he had the energy to get up and do the same, or to get under the covers, or to move in any way whatsoever.

He hadn’t made up his mind when Nate reemerged from the bathroom, bringing a wet washcloth with him. Brad thought he paused for a moment when he saw Brad, still sprawled out on top of the covers, but if so it only lasted an instant.

“Here,” he said, tossing the cloth to Brad, and busied himself pulling down the spread and sheets on the other side of the bed. Strangely heartened by this lack of solicitousness, Brad wiped himself down quickly, shivering a little as he ran the cloth over his groin and inner thighs, where his flesh was still sensitive and fluttery. He noted in passing that there was a lot less post-coitus mess to deal with when you were a woman, at least when condoms were involved, but it was still nice to get the worst of the stickiness off his skin.

He tossed the cloth on the floor when he was done – this _was_ a hotel room, after all – and turned back to Nate just as Nate yanked the spread and sheet out from under Brad unceremoniously, almost flinging him off the bed. Brad glared, but Nate just blinked at him innocently.

“C’mon, get in,” Nate ordered, holding the sheet up.

“Your bedside manner also sucks,” Brad observed, but distractedly, watching Nate settle in under the covers. “What are we doing here, sir?” He winced inside at the “sir” slipping out, but Nate either didn’t notice or pretended not to.

“Going to sleep,” Nate told him, the unspoken “ _duh_ ” hanging in the air.

Brad tried to figure out how to ask what he wanted to ask, and Nate watched him for a moment before sighing. “I told you, Brad,” he said, “I’m not going anywhere. At the very _least_ I’m going to follow through and see if this worked.”

Brad clamped ruthlessly down on the spark of hope he felt at Nate’s words. “You think it might – overnight?”

Nate shrugged. “Well, it didn’t happen immediately, obviously, so the next logical thing is to suppose it’ll happen in your sleep. You were unconscious the first time, after all, right?”

“Right,” Brad agreed, but he was stuck on the image of it _happening immediately_ , and he couldn’t help but ask, “What would you have done if it had? Happened, right after?”

“I would have reenacted that scene from _The Crying Game_ ,” Nate told him, very, very dryly, and once again Brad was startled into a laugh. Nate grinned at him, and Brad shook his head. _Nate Fick, you are a marvel_ , he thought, and hoped very hard that the thought didn’t show on his face.

“Come on, get in,” Nate said again, yawning, and Brad sighed and slid under the covers, abruptly conscious that he was still naked – that they both were.

Nate twisted around to turn off the lamp, and the room plunged into darkness. Brad curled on his side, his back to Nate, intending to leave him plenty of space. He stiffened, therefore, when he felt Nate slide up behind him and fling one arm over Brad’s waist, tugging him back to settle into the crook of Nate’s own body.

“Nate…” he began.

“Shh,” Nate admonished him. “I’m a cuddler, get used to it.” He burrowed his face into Brad’s neck with a sigh and went boneless against him, seeming – or pretending – to fall asleep almost instantly. Brad hesitated, debating pointing out to Nate that he might wake up spooning a man – _oh God, let that be the case_ – but in the end simple exhaustion won out and he let it go. That, and the feel of Nate’s arm draped over him, his body pressed warm against him, was too precious an opportunity to pass up. Brad sighed, in as much contentment as he dared allow himself, and let himself relax.

He expected to lie awake for a while at least, stressing about what might or might not happen, but he was exhausted from far more than just the sex, and he felt himself drifting off almost immediately. His last conscious thought as he slid under was to wonder, vaguely, what Nate had meant by _get used to it_ , or whether he had meant anything by it, but Brad was asleep before he could formulate an answer.


	7. Chapter 7

Nate woke slowly, wincing against the sunlight streaming in the window of the room that was – not his bedroom. Nate froze a moment, and then the memory of the night before flooded in on him. Right. This was a hotel room. Where he’d had sex.

Where he’d had, actually, the best sex he’d ever had in his life. With Brad. Who was a woman. Or had been.

And who was no longer in the bed with him.

Nate lurched upright, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. Had it worked? Was Brad – ?

His gaze swept the room and stopped on the figure huddled in one of the chairs by the table. Brad was limned in the light falling from the window, making him little more than a black outline, but the fall of the too-long hair and the bowed, hopeless posture said everything.

“It didn’t work,” Nate blurted, feeling a wave of sorrow. “Oh, Brad, I’m so sorry.”

Brad’s shoulders jerked once, convulsively, and Nate was out of the bed and kneeling before the chair, pulling Brad into his arms, before he’d even consciously thought of moving. Brad collapsed into Nate’s lap, hiding her face in Nate’s shoulder. He shuddered as if sobs were wracking him, but he didn’t make a sound, and Nate couldn’t do anything but wrap his arms around her and ride it out.

“Shh, Brad,” he whispered, hardly knowing what he was saying, “I’m here, I’m so sorry, we’ll work it out, we’ll think of something, I swear to God, I’m here, I’m so sorry…”

He had no idea how long they stayed there like that, Brad shaking in his arms and Nate murmuring anything comforting he could think of over and over again, but eventually Brad fell still against him, and Nate stopped talking, just held him, breathed with him. Then Nate felt him pull away a little, and released his hold so that Brad could sit up. Her face was dry, but Nate winced involuntarily at her expression; Brad had looked lost many times when they had been in Iraq, but this was worse. This look was… hollow.

“What the fuck am I going to do, Nate?” Brad asked, not as if he was expecting an answer, but more as if the words were being torn out of him. “I can’t go back to the Corps like this. I can’t – I can’t be _me_ like this.” His voice rose, wildly. “I can’t be _anybody_ like this, I can’t, I’m not, I have nowhere, nothing, what the fuck, what the FUCK am I supposed to – ”

“Brad. Brad! _Brad!_ ” Nate yelled, trying to interrupt, louder as Brad got louder, and when that didn’t work he grabbed Brad’s chin and forced her to look at him, cutting off his torrent of words with a hand over his mouth. “ _Brad_ ,” he repeated, as forcefully as he could. “Listen to me. You are not alone. You do not have nothing. You have me, and you have Ray, and we are not going to leave you. _I_ am not going to leave you. _You are not alone._ We are going to figure this shit out, do you hear me?”

He removed his hand from Brad’s mouth, but Brad made no reply. “Answer me, Brad,” Nate said. “Do you copy?”

Brad just stared at him, through him. His eyes looked… empty. Nate’s heart turned over, and he desperately resisted the urge to shake Brad, slap him, anything to get that horrible vacant look off her face. Instead he snapped, in his best royally pissed officer’s voice, “I said, _do you copy_ , Sergeant?”

Brad blinked, and his gaze came into focus, though it only fastened on Nate for a moment before sliding off to the side. “Copy, sir,” he said.

It was a rote response, automatic, and almost certainly a total lie, but it was better than nothing. Anything was better than that terrifying _blankness_ Nate had glimpsed in Brad’s eyes for those few moments. Nate never wanted to see anything like it ever again.

“Good,” he replied, and shocked himself by pulling Brad to him for a kiss.

It wasn’t a sexy kiss at all; it was hard and fierce and he’d smashed both their lips painfully against their teeth, but that wasn’t the point, and Nate knew he’d made that point well when he pulled back and saw Brad’s eyes fully on him this time, startled and tracking and _aware_.

“Don’t you dare check out on me, Colbert,” Nate told him. “I won’t have it. We are going to beat this thing. How copy?”

There was a pause, and then Brad’s lips tugged up just a tiny bit; at Nate’s continued use of Marinespeak, he knew. The smirk was barely perceptible, but Nate saw it, and his heart lifted. “Clear copy, sir,” Brad replied, finally, and the faint undertone of sarcasm there did more to reassure Nate that Brad wasn’t going to go bugshit on him than anything else could have.

“Good,” he said again, and pushed himself back a little on his heels, away from Brad. It was time this conversation got a lot less dire. “Glad we’ve cleared that up. And now, for my first order of business on that front, I’m going to find my pants.”

Brad looked down, and blinked, obviously only just now noticing that Nate was still stark naked. The tiny smirk became a real one, and Nate was torn between relief and embarrassment to see where Brad’s gaze was now focused.

“ _Well_ , now,” Brad drawled, “Don’t bother about that on _my_ account, sir.”

Nate was startled to feel a thread of arousal uncurl in his belly at the way Brad purred that, and hastily got up and turned away, looking for his boxers in the mess on the floor. It wasn’t that he was against a repeat of last night – Nate, in fact, had to forcibly fight back his memories of last night to keep his proto-boner from turning into a real one – but this was not the time. He had a proposal to make to Brad, and he wanted coffee and food and more coffee in both of them before he made it.

And besides, he’d heard the shakiness behind Brad’s mocking innuendo. Nate had no intention of touching Brad again until Brad had regained his equilibrium – or as much of it as he could reasonably be expected to have – and until they both knew where they stood.

The latter being something Nate would very much like to know the answer to himself, if he was being honest.

“Nate?” Brad said, and Nate turned, tugging up his boxers, to see Brad still perched on the floor, watching him with an expression Nate couldn’t quite interpret but instinctively felt he should reassure. He smiled and walked over to offer Brad a hand up.

Brad looked at his hand rather askance, and Nate rolled his eyes. “Coffee?” he offered, and Brad’s face – well, it didn’t _brighten_ , exactly, but it definitely became much more alert at the word.

“ _Fuck_ yes,” she declared, fervently, grabbing his hand and levering herself up.

 

* * *

 

Nate had taken one look at the admittedly rather dismal excuse for a continental breakfast spread the hotel had offered and said _not no but hell no_ , and bundled them into his car to drive them to this diner he claimed had the best-tasting pancakes in New England. Brad didn’t care if their pancakes tasted like cardboard dipped in raw sewage, as long as the place had coffee. And bacon. But mostly coffee.

Nate had deliberately kept the conversation light since they’d left the hotel room, chatting about Harvard and his classes and other random topics, and Brad had let him do it. He was, in fact, totally fine with that, because right now Brad was done with trying to think about the absolute sobka pit of shit he was currently mired in.

He’d had one chance, one idea to fix this curse that had seemed even remotely plausible, and it had failed spectacularly. He was fucked, fucked to hell and back, and there was nothing he could do about it. So he would concentrate on anticipating coffee and bacon, and on watching Nate’s mobile, animated (beautiful) face as he blathered about macroeconomics or some endearingly dorky shit like that, and let the rest lie as long as he could. As a method of mentally ditching the world, it was probably an improvement over lying beneath a Humvee and hammering at tar, anyway.

The diner turned out to be one of those retro-fifties things that did everything but put the waitstaff on roller skates. The hostess gave Brad an admiring look and Nate an envious one (lesbian then, that was refreshing), and led them to a cozy red-vinyled corner booth that had a great view of the street, but was sheltered from the morning sunlight. If this had been a real breakfast date, Brad thought wryly, it would have been perfect.

Nate ordered pancakes, of course, and Brad asked for eggs and bacon with an extra side of bacon, and Nate told the waitress to save herself some trouble and just bring them an entire pot of coffee. The food came with gratifying swiftness, and they both ate like it was their last meal, foregoing talk altogether for a while. Brad reveled in the simple tranquility of greasy food and hot caffeine and their comfortable mutual silence for as long as he could.

Finally, though, Nate pushed his empty plate aside, refilled his coffee mug for the fifth time, and turned serious, Let’s Talk Now eyes on Brad. Brad sighed and toyed with his last piece of bacon, and waited.

“So it didn’t work,” Nate said.

Brad felt like he should roll his eyes and make a comment about obviousness, but he was too tired to summon up the energy. “No,” he said instead, simply. “It didn’t.” _And I am fucked._

“Maybe…” Nate hesitated. “Maybe it was about something else, then.” _Not me_ , was what he meant.

And of course Nate could think that, because Brad still hadn’t told him everything. Nate apparently had _believed_ Brad when Brad had told him it was just idle attraction he felt for Nate, and Brad had no idea how Nate could see everything else so clearly and yet be oblivious to _this_ of all things, when Brad felt like he’d had it tattooed on his forehead the whole of last night.

It _had_ to have been about Nate. There was nothing else it could be that made even the slightest sense. And yet, Nate was still right: apparently it wasn’t.

Which left the only other possible explanation: that there _was_ no right answer. It had been a Catch-22 from the start: a riddle with no solution, a contract with no exit clause.

 _Or, in other words, a fucking lie from start to finish_ , he thought. It had been a trap; one that he saw no possible purpose or reason for, but nevertheless would never escape.

“Brad?” Nate said, worry in his voice, and Brad pulled himself back to the present with an effort.

“You’re probably right,” he lied, and winced inside at the hollow note in his own voice. “Sure.”

Nate reached across the table and gripped his hand hard for a moment. “We’ll figure it out, Brad,” he said, voice laced with conviction, and Brad did his best to make his smile and nod in answer seem sincere. He supposed it was nice to see that not _all_ of Nate’s idealistic optimism had been crushed out of him in Iraq, and Brad didn’t have either the heart or the energy to disabuse him of the hope.

“In the meantime, though,” Nate went on, sitting back, “I think it’s time to make some strategic decisions about your situation.” Brad really didn’t want to think about decisions right now, strategic or otherwise, but he didn’t have the will to say that either, so he just nodded again.

“Right. Well, first, I’m going to take it as read that you’re not interested in going to the Corps,” Nate said, dryly, and the notion was enough to rouse Brad sufficiently to shudder at it. He loved being a Marine, had planned to be one all his life, but he had less than zero interest in being a laboratory rat for the same length of time. And that was assuming they believed him; the other alternative was being stuck in a psychiatric ward to rot forever, which was hardly any better.

“I think this is one problem that will benefit even more than usual from a lack of government oversight, sir,” he said, and Nate snorted.

“Agreed,” he said, “but flying under the radar presents its own problems.”

“Like the fact that this person,” and Brad gestured at himself, “doesn’t actually exist?”

“Not on paper, no,” Nate said, sharply enough to convey that he was displeased with Brad referring to himself as _not existing_. “But I’m sure that between you, me and Ray we can find a way to get around that.” He hesitated a moment, and his voice became terribly gentle. “Brad, I think – I think for now, it would be best if Brad Colbert stayed missing. Just for now. And that you – you be someone else, for a while. Just until we figure this thing out.”

Brad sucked in a breath. He hadn’t really thought about it quite that way, but Nate’s words unintentionally put the situation into sharp relief. Because he was right: Sergeant Brad Colbert, USMC, was missing, UA, _gone_ , and he was going to stay that way, and this woman with his memories and feelings and – and whatever had taken his place.

Brad Colbert was, for all intents and purposes, dead. And the sooner he accepted that, the sooner he could –

Could what? Move on? Move on to what?

“ _Jesus_ , Brad,” Nate yelped, and grabbed his arm and some napkins and started sponging the back of his hand and wrist frantically, and it was only then that Brad realized he’d slopped hot coffee all over himself.

 _That should probably hurt_ , Brad observed clinically, watching Nate clean him off. He thought it did hurt, actually; it was just that the pain of being burned felt pretty fucking inconsequential at the moment.

“Brad, look at me,” Nate snapped, and Brad looked at him to see Nate giving him a look that was halfway between anger and – was that _fear_? Why would Nate –

“Brad, you promised,” Nate said, “you fucking _promised_ me you would not check out, and I am holding you to that, goddammit. Please, just – just stick with me, okay? Okay, Brad?”

The fear was for _him_ , Brad realized, and it was a shock. He had seen Nate display all kinds of emotions in Iraq – amusement, determination, irony, frustration, anger, and even something close to despair – but the one thing he had never, ever seen on Nate’s face, in all that time, was fear. He had never seen Nate Fick be afraid of anything – until now.

Because of him. Brad was scaring Nate, and that was completely unacceptable.

He shook his head, trying to clear that numb feeling away, and attempted a smile. It probably looked dismal, but hopefully it was the effort that counted.

“I’m with you, sir,” he said, and then shook his head again, and amended, “I’m with you, Nate.” No more of this “sir” shit; he wasn’t a Marine anymore. He wasn’t anything anymore.

“Yes, you are,” Nate said, in that emphatic way he had when he was determined to make something true just by saying it forcefully enough. _I am assured of this_. It was really kind of adorable, the way Nate kept thinking that would actually work.

He realized Nate was still holding his hand, stroking the unburned fingers gently, and had to swallow past a sudden lump in his throat, at how kind Nate was being to him when he really had no reason to be. He turned his hand over so they were palm to palm, and closed his fingers over Nate’s as much as he could, until the pain of the burned skin stretching warned him to stop.

Nate blew out a shaky breath, and Brad pretended not to notice, kept the smile on his face. Nate Fick was not going to be scared because of him anymore, if Brad could possibly help it. If that meant he had to pull his shit together and pretend that everything wasn’t completely FUBAR, then so be it.

He had done far worse, for far less reward than this.

 

* * *

 

“Come stay with me,” Nate said, blurted really. He’d planned on being a little more subtle than that with this idea, but Brad was sitting there with first degree burns on his hand and trying to fucking _smile_ at him, trying to be okay for Nate, and it just came tumbling out.

Brad froze, and Nate rushed on, “I have a roommate right now, but I can get out of that easily, I know at least three people who would be happy to sublet the place from me, and – ”

“Nate – ” Brad began.

“ – and I’ve got enough put by that I can find a good place for us, so I can keep going to school while – ”

“Nate – ”

“ – while we look for a way to fix what’s happened to you,” he finished, stubbornly.

Brad stared at him like he’d never seen him before, like Nate made no sense whatsoever. He probably didn’t.

“Nate,” she said at last, “You can’t – I can’t ask that of you, that’s not – ”

“You’re not asking that of me, Brad, I’m asking it of you,” Nate countered. Brad shook his head and opened his mouth, and Nate jumped in again, “Please, Brad, let me do this for you. You have to have _somewhere_ to go, and I feel like I’m responsible – ”

It was the wrong thing to say, Nate saw instantly. Brad’s expression shut down, retreating even further than before, and Nate’s heart sank.

“You’re not responsible for any of this, s- Nate,” Brad told him, dully. “You have no obligation here.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, Brad,” Nate tried, but Brad just shook his head.

“You did,” he countered. “And I can’t let you – you’ve already – ” Brad took a deep breath. “I’m not one of the men under your command anymore, Nate. I know you always wanted to protect us, that you would do whatever you – but this isn’t an ambush in Muwaffaqiyah, this is your _life_.”

Nate stared at Brad, and tried to figure out if he should laugh or scream. Maybe both. “Brad,” he said at last, “that is the most supremely fucked-up chain of logic I have ever _heard_ , and that is including the horseshit that _led_ to Muwaffaqiyah.”

Brad blinked at him, and Nate decided laughing was the way to go after all. Angry laughing, maybe, but laughing, because this was _ridiculous_. “Unbelievable,” he growled, half to himself. “I swear, only a fucking Marine would think that offering _crash space_ is more of an imposition than dodging fucking _bullets_. I mean, Jesus, Brad, are you even _listening_ to yourself?”

Something sparked in Brad’s gaze, and he narrowed his eyes and snapped back, “Bullshit. Don’t try to make this less than it is, Nate. This is not having some buddy crash on your couch for a week. You’re talking about turning your entire _life_ upside down for me. There could even be fucking _legal_ repercussions – ”

Nate made a scoffing noise, and Brad raised her eyebrows. “No? So you were planning to go that completely _non_ -criminal route they have for getting me a fake identity?”

Nate opened his mouth, and then shut it, momentarily thrown. Brad smiled, grimly. “No, I didn’t think so.”

Nate was edging toward getting seriously pissed off now. He was trying to do a good thing here. Why the hell did Brad have to make it so difficult?

“I’m not saying there won’t be risks,” Nate said, trying very hard not to grit his teeth, “but if I want to take those risks on, that’s _my_ choice.”

“No, it isn’t,” Brad told him, and Nate blinked, taken aback.  “It’s mine. My choice. And I won’t let you get sucked into this any further, Nate, especially not for the wrong reasons.”

Brad winced as soon as the last words were out of his mouth. As well he should, because just what the fuck did _that_ mean?

“Just what the fuck does that mean, Brad?” Nate asked, softly, and Brad winced again, avoiding his eyes.

“It doesn’t mean anything. Just forget it,” Brad said, almost pleading, and Nate crossed his arms and let his face say exactly what the odds were on _that_.

“What does that mean, Brad?” Nate repeated, in much the same tone as he had once ordered Brad to get out of a hole in a garden in Baghdad, and Brad’s expression as he caved was eerily identical to the one he’d worn then, too.

“I just – you’ve already gone above and beyond here, Nate,” Brad said, miserably.

Nate took a second to process that, and then his mouth dropped open, whether more in disbelief or in fury he couldn’t say. It took a moment before he could even recover enough to speak. Did Brad actually think –

“What the fuck, Brad, you think I fucked you out of DUTY?”

Oops, he hadn’t meant that to be quite so loud. Heads turned all over the restaurant to look at them. Nate managed to keep himself from cringing at the momentary silence that fell, determined to maintain his glare at Brad, who was a _fucking idiot_ , apparently.

Brad’s shoulders hunched, but she shot back defiantly, “Well, you tell me, Nate. Why _did_ you do it?”

The question should absolutely not have caught him as off guard as it did. “Because,” he said, and stuttered over how to follow that.

Why _had_ he done it? Viewed with any kind of objectivity, the entire thing was beyond insane, and yet he had thrown himself into the thick of it without a moment’s hesitation. He had never even considered backing off, not even when it led to – what it had led to. Was it just as simple as that he was letting his dick do all his thinking, and the only thing that mattered was the gorgeous woman in front of him, and never mind all the rest?

 _No_ , Nate thought, firmly. He couldn’t deny that sheer attraction hadn’t been part of it, maybe even a large part of it, but Nate didn’t think that was the sole factor at work here. He wasn’t going to claim he was an especially deep person or anything, but he wasn’t _that_ shallow.

And it wasn’t just Brad’s apparent notion that Nate was some kind of self-sacrificing martyr either. First of all, the notion that last night qualified as a _sacrifice_ on his part was simply ludicrous. Second of all… well, okay. Muwaffaqiyah, was it?

“Do you know why I got out of the Humvee that night, Brad?” he asked.

Brad blinked, but he didn’t need to ask which night Nate meant, of course. “To protect us,” he answered. “To do what needed to be done.” _For duty_ , his tone implied. Which is what Brad had already inferred, Nate knew he was thinking, so what was Nate’s point?

Nate nodded. “Yeah, that was a big part of it. But you know why else I did it?”

Brad’s forehead creased, and she tilted her head in inquiry.

“Because it felt right,” Nate said.

Brad opened his mouth, and Nate quickly clarified, “Not because it was the right thing to do, even though it was. But because it _felt_ right.”

Brad’s brow furrowed further, trying to parse that, and Nate watched him carefully as he added, “And also – because it was a fucking rush.”

Brad’s eyebrows went up, and she sat back in the booth, considering him. Nate held her gaze, letting that idea sink in. The idea that maybe Nate wasn’t the paragon of sober nobility Brad evidently believed him to be. That maybe a Classics major from Dartmouth who joined the Marines on impulse after hearing one lecture on the brotherhood of the armed forces actually might not be the poster boy for rational, non-reckless behavior.

It was a little crazy that reassuring Brad involved assuring him that Nate’s motives _weren’t_ entirely pure, that Nate, in fact, might be a little crazy himself, but at this point they might as well pile the crazy on and be done with it. _The more the merrier_ , he thought, wryly.

Finally, her lips tilted in what was not quite a smile, but the next thing to it. “So you’re saying you fucked me because it was ‘a rush’?” The words should have seemed accusatory or offended, but instead Brad sounded… bemused.

Nate smirked. “I’m saying I did what I did because I wanted to do it, Brad. Not because I felt _obligated_. I did it because it felt right. And I did it because it felt good.”

He hadn’t meant to say that last part any differently than the rest, but he heard his voice go husky on the word “good”, and saw Brad’s eyes darken almost instantly in response, dropping to his lips. Deliberately, he licked them, and felt a pulse of arousal as her own lips fell just slightly open at the sight. Suddenly whatever they’d been arguing about seemed much less important than getting out of here and going back to that convenient hotel room and…

“Everything okay here, ma’am?”

Both Brad and Nate jerked in surprise. Nate turned to look up at the portly man in the white shirt and manager’s nametag hovering over their table, and took a moment to be appalled that both he and Brad had evidently let their situational awareness slip so badly that neither of them had even noticed his approach. Manager Guy was splitting his attention between a stern glare for Nate and what Nate guessed was meant to be a fatherly look for Brad, and Nate abruptly remembered his not-so-subtle yell from a few moments ago. Whoops.

Brad just blinked at the man. Nate put on his best smile and said, “We’re fine. Sorry about – ”

“I wasn’t talking to you, sir,” Manager Guy cut him off, managing to make “sir” sound like “scumbucket”, and kept his eyes on Brad. “Ma’am?” he prompted gently, and Nate couldn’t decide whether to be amused or horrified to find himself cast in the role of _possible abusive boyfriend_.

Brad just stared at Manager Guy with a “what the fuck” expression, obviously not having the faintest clue of what the man was driving at, and if Nate had ever needed proof that Brad wasn’t actually a woman, that would have provided it.

“We’re fine?” Brad said, in a way which suggested that Manager Guy was evidently not all that bright if he couldn’t see that, and Nate had to suppress a smirk.

Manager Guy looked affronted that no one appreciated his unsolicited chivalry, and Nate hastily added, “We were just leaving. If someone could bring us the check?”

 

* * *

 

In the parking lot, Nate followed Brad around to the passenger side of the car. Brad, who was belatedly getting an idea of just what that bullshit with the manager in the diner had been, turned around to say irritably, “I swear to God, Nate, if you’re planning to open this door for me – ”

But Nate pushed him against the side of the car, pressing his body flush against Brad’s, and kissed him instead. Brad melted into the kiss instantly, and it took less than five seconds for their clinch to become completely inappropriate for the venue, not that Brad cared. He was much more interested in feeling Nate’s tongue move in his mouth and the rapidly hardening length of him pressing between Brad’s legs, separated by two layers of suddenly very annoying denim.

Finally, though, Nate broke the kiss with what seemed to be an effort, and asked, thickly, “Hotel?”

Brad briefly debated campaigning for the backseat of the car, but realized they didn’t have any condoms with them. Plus it was kind of broad daylight, and – “Hotel, yes, hurry,” Brad said, and gave Nate a push to get him going already. Nate grinned wickedly and hastened around to get in on the driver’s side.

They didn’t talk during the car ride, which seemed to Brad like it was a million miles long. Brad spent it dividing his time between anticipating what was going to happen once they finally got back to his hotel room, and mulling in a distracted way over what Nate had said in the diner.

He’d been – well, _startled_ didn’t seem like the right word. Caught off guard, maybe, by Nate’s words, but on reflection it made a surprising amount of sense. Brad loved the Corps, but no one knew better than he that no one became a Marine, much less a Recon Marine, without having a, shall we say, somewhat _skewed_ sense of what constitutes a good idea versus a bad one. Not to mention what they would consider acceptable amounts of risk. And now that he thought about it, that would probably apply even more in Nate’s case than it would to your average recruit.

He thought that maybe someone else would have been upset to realize that Nate was doing this at least partially just for the sheer thrill of it, but instead Brad found it an almost incredible _relief_. Though he still didn’t doubt that Nate had felt honor-bound to help Brad no matter what, it made all the difference to realize that even so, at least Nate was also enjoying doing it.

Well. Obviously he had _enjoyed_ it, Brad thought wryly – Nate was a guy, after all, and sex was sex – but now Brad could allow himself to believe that maybe it was more than just the physical part of it Nate was enjoying. _It’s a challenge to him, this thing_ , Brad thought. And he knew very well what happens when you threw a challenge in a Marine’s face. It wasn’t Nate’s fault that he didn’t realize yet that this particular challenge was unwinnable.

“It was a fucking rush” was hardly a declaration of grand romance, of course, but Brad knew that wasn’t on the table in any case. And if Nate was really having _fun_ , and not secretly wishing he was anywhere but here, then maybe that meant Brad could have him for just a little bit longer.

Good enough.

 

* * *

 

Brad didn’t waste a moment when they got back to the hotel, almost sprinting ahead of Nate to unlock the door of her room and get inside. Nate reached the door in time to keep it from closing and relocking on him, and went in to find Brad crouched down, digging through her duffel on the floor, balancing on the balls of her feet with an intent look on her face.

Nate took a moment to just look at her while she wasn’t paying attention to him, all of Brad’s focus and competence and wry intelligence and grace of movement contained in a stunning female body, and tried very hard not to think it, but –

 _She’s perfect_ , Nate thought, _perfect for me_ , and immediately experienced a wave of guilt, because Brad didn’t want this, this was _torture_ for Brad, being a woman, and he had no right to even think –

“Ah,” Brad said with satisfaction, and pulled out a box of condoms, which she tossed on the bed before beginning to strip off her clothes. Naturally, Brad wasn’t doing it in a teasing or lascivious manner at all, just getting her shirt and jeans and boots off in the most efficient way possible, but that didn’t stop Nate’s mouth from going dry as he watched.

Brad was down to bra and panties before she noticed Nate just standing there, watching her. A strange look passed over her face, one Nate couldn’t quite decipher, and then she walked over to him and just stood there for a moment, studying him. Nate had no idea what she saw in his expression, and just hoped it looked like simple arousal and… not what he had just been thinking.

The moment stretched, until finally Brad shook her head a little and closed her eyes for just slightly longer than a blink, and then reached out to push his shirt up his torso. Nate obliged by pulling it off and letting it fall to the floor, and she paused again, looking at him like he had looked at her. The silence seemed heavy, absolute except for the soft sound of their breaths, like there was no one in the world except the two of them.

Nate waited, and at length she stepped forward to slip her fingers behind the waistband of his jeans, pulling him flush against her. Nate put his hands on her hips and bent his head to reach her lips, and it was almost frightening, how easily they slotted together, how right it felt.

Last night their kisses had been frantic, hungry, but now they were slow, lips and tongues sliding almost lazily over each other, exploring rather than devouring. Nate found himself slipping into an almost meditative state, losing himself in delving into Brad’s mouth, in his hands moving slowly up and down her body, not even trying to touch more sensitive regions, but just smoothing his palms over hips and back and arms and back again, over and over. Her hands were moving too, curling up between his shoulder blades and sweeping down his torso to dip just a little under the waistband of his jeans before sliding back up again.

Nate had no notion of how long they stood there, kissing like they had just invented the activity, but finally Brad moved her hands around to his front, where she deftly undid his fly and slipped her hand inside his boxers to free his half-hard cock, which swelled to full hardness almost instantly under her stroking touch. Nate groaned into Brad’s mouth and unhooked her bra in retaliation, pulling her hand away from him so he could get the bra off of her before cupping one breast in his hand, thumbing the nipple until it hardened in his palm and he got an answering groan from her. He began shuffling them toward the bed, awkwardly, still kissing her, stopping when he felt the backs of Brad’s knees hit the edge of the mattress.

She smiled, breaking the kiss, and fell backwards onto the bed with a _whoomph_ , bouncing a little. Nate grinned at her and shucked off his jeans and boxers in one move before climbing onto the bed after her. He reached for her panties, intending to eat her out again, but Brad shook her head, stopping him, and held out a condom instead.

“No,” she said, raspy, through kiss-swollen lips. “Just you, inside me. Okay?”

Nate didn’t think there were words to describe how very okay that was, and so just nodded and took the little package. Brad pulled off her panties while he rolled the condom on, and the moment he was done she pounced, rolling him onto his back and straddling him. Nate barely had time to blink before she’d positioned herself and sank down, enveloping him to the hilt, and Nate arched his back and let out a long, low guttural sound at the incredible sensation, hearing it echoed by Brad’s own moan.

She shifted a little, her face somewhere between pleasure and concentration – this still had to be a strange thing for her – and then moved her hips, riding him, her gaze fastened on Nate’s face. Nate brought his hands up to grasp her hips, helping her, and gave into the rhythm of it, feeling her slip up and down on his cock, and it was still somehow that strange Zen thing, where it was hot and amazing and yet not urgent at all. He wanted it to last forever, this feeling of being inside her, fucking her in slow rolling waves of pleasure, and Brad seemed to feel the same, moving almost languidly upon him, eyes half closed.

Eventually, though, she changed the tempo, speeding it up, throwing her head back and arching her spine, her hands reaching back to balance herself on his thighs, and the sight of her like that sparked a fire in his brain, and he began raising his own hips to meet her when she came down, grunting as he thrust himself inside her.

Brad, silent until now, began a soft series of little moans, spiking higher each time their bodies came together with a sharp slap of skin on skin, and Nate knew she was close. He panted, “Brad, yes, come for me, come on, let me see you come,” his words seeming barely intelligible to himself.

“Nate,” she whispered, voice hitching with each thrust, “Nate, Nate, Nate – ”

“Come for me,” he groaned again, and thrust up hard, and she folded forward, shuddering and moaning as her orgasm hit. Her body squeezed and clenched around his cock, and Nate let go and followed her over, his cry of release blending with hers as he felt himself spend inside her, felt her milking him dry.

She collapsed on top of him, panting, and found his mouth with hers, and Nate wrapped his arms around her and kissed her back, sloppy and intermittent with their heavy breaths. After a moment Brad broke off the kissing and dropped her head to rest on his chest, and they both just lay there, breathing, coming down from the high.

Finally, Nate acknowledged he had to get rid of the condom before things got nasty. “Brad,” he murmured, pushing at her gently. “Gotta move, here.”

Brad grumbled something inarticulate, but rolled off him, letting Nate’s cock slip free, and Nate hurried to get up and dispose of the condom before his body convinced him to just drift off, for all it was the middle of the day. He came back to find Brad sprawled across the entirety of the bed, in the midst of a full-body stretch, and his dick gave a helpless little twitch at the sight even though there was zero chance of another erection anytime soon.

She caught sight of him and gave him a pleased, lazy grin which Nate returned involuntarily, and moved over to make room for him on the bed. Nate collapsed in the space thus vacated and indulged in a stretch of his own, which ended with him flopping over onto his stomach, one arm landing across Brad’s midsection.

“Oof,” Brad remarked, dryly, and Nate just grinned, snuggling his face into the pillow. He felt Brad pick up his hand where it was draped across her, idly playing with his fingers, but didn’t bother to move other than to curl his fingers a little more into where she was stroking across the pads, pressing back lightly.

He was drifting in a not-quite-doze when she said, suddenly, “I’m not interested in being a charity case.”

Nate stilled a moment, and then turned his head to look at her, but Brad was focused with great intensity on where their fingers were entangled atop her stomach. “I’m not interested in that, either,” he said, carefully.

She was silent for a few moments, then blurted, “If you still – if you still want to do this, with the apartment, then I want to pull my weight. I pay half the rent and bills and everything, or no deal.”

Nate suppressed his immediate reaction of triumph, and opened his mouth to ask the obvious question, which she preempted by adding, “If we can get me a new identity, I can get a job just like anyone else.” She swallowed. “I might as well anyway. If this thing doesn’t… go away, I’ll have to figure out something to do in any case.” She attempted a casual shrug, but the now-rigid line of her shoulders ruined it. “This is as good a place as any to start over, right?”

Nate felt a pang in his chest, and turned himself over, tugging at her until she slid over against his side. He put his arm around her and squeezed tightly.

“I absolutely still want to do the apartment thing,” he told her. “But Brad, we _will_ figure out how to fix this.” Nate forced himself to make his next words casual. “This is only temporary.” _Even if I’m starting to realize I don’t want it to be._

He felt her start to stiffen against him, but a moment later seemed to make herself loosen up again. “Right, of course,” she said, but her voice was heavy.

Nate bent his head to kiss her temple. “We’ll figure it out, Brad,” he repeated. “And in the meantime, we’ll help each other.” She didn’t reply, and he jostled her a little, playfully. “We’ll save money and get us a one bedroom, baby,” he drawled, in the smarmiest hustler come-on voice he could muster.

There was a pause, and then Brad snorted. “Call me ‘baby’ again and lose a testicle, Fick,” she said, but there was a smile playing on her lips.

“Cookie? Dollface?” he inquired, earnestly.

“I know thirty-seven ways to kill you without getting off this bed,” she informed him solemnly.

“Damn, they only taught us thirty-three in OCS,” Nate said, managing to keep his face straight.

“Thus once again proving the superiority of grunts over officers.”

Nate pretended not to hear the note of sadness underneath that jest, and reached up to comb his fingers through her hair as she laid her head on his shoulder. “That was never in doubt,” he assured her.


	8. Chapter 8

Walt stood before the front door of Nate Fick’s apartment for almost five minutes before he summoned up the courage to knock. _He won’t mind you dropping by_ , he told himself for the three hundredth time. _He wouldn’t have posted his address to the Bravo Two grapevine if he did._ Even if the LT – sorry, the _Captain_ – hadn’t actually logged into the forum for months now.

But that was why Walt was here, really. If Nate _hadn’t_ heard – well, he deserved to hear it from a brother, if so, and in person. Walt nodded to himself, firmly, and rapped on the door.

“Coming!” came a familiar voice from inside, and a moment later the door opened to reveal the captain, grinning, in the midst of saying, “What, did you forget your – ”

He saw Walt and stopped dead, smile dropping off his face. “Corporal,” he said, blankly, and then a second later, “I mean, Walt. Uh. Hello.”

It wasn’t the most welcoming welcome ever, but it was a start. “Hi, sir,” Walt said, trying to keep the sheepish tone out of his voice and probably failing spectacularly. “Sorry to just drop in on you like this, but I was in town, and – is this a bad time?”

The captain stared at him for a moment in what almost seemed like consternation before he abruptly shook himself and said, “Ah – no! No, of course not, Walt. Come on in.” He opened the door wide, invitingly, and Walt shuffled inside before he could think better of it.

The short entrance hall gave onto a rather lovely main room, with pale plaster walls, a high airy ceiling and wide full-length windows that provided a good view of the city below. The furniture was sparse – couch, armchair, coffee table, entertainment center, a freestanding lamp or two – but of good quality, and the polished hardwood floor and the lack of clutter, other than one wall lined entirely with shelves stuffed full of books, lent to the open, clear feeling of the space. There was a smallish but nicely appointed kitchen off to the left, next to a hallway which presumably led to the rest of the apartment.

“Take a seat, Walt,” the captain said, polite cheer now in full force, almost entirely masking his evident disorientation at finding one of his former Marines on his doorstep. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“No, sir, I’m good,” Walt responded, sinking down on the comfortably squashy couch and trying not to look around too obviously. There were papers and a couple of liberally highlighted textbooks scattered across the coffee table, a small pile of free weights in a corner, and Walt noted with interest that there were two pairs of go-fasters arranged next to the entrance hall, one pair smaller than the other. So the captain was living with someone, then, good for him.

“Walt, call me Nate, for God’s sake,” the captain said, following him into the living room and taking the chair next to the couch, leaving Walt his space. “I’ve been out of the Corps for years now.”

Walt didn’t know how comfortable he felt with that, but if the captain wanted it he’d try. “Nate,” he said, nodding, and the cap – _Nate_ gave him a smile in response.

“Much better,” he said. “So, what brings you to Cambridge, Corporal?”

“It’s actually Sergeant now, s- Nate,” Walt told him, a little shyly.

Nate’s eyebrows went up, and his smile became genuine. “My apologies, Walt, I hadn’t heard. Congratulations on your promotion.”

“Thank you, sir,” Walt said with quiet pride.

Nate didn’t contest the “sir” in that context, just nodded to him firmly. Then he quirked a mischievous smile and repeated, “So, what brings you to Cambridge, Sergeant?”

“Well, my sister got married, moved up here a year or so ago,” Walt said, “and she just had her first baby, and I was on leave, so…”

“Congrats again, Uncle Walt,” Nate grinned, and Walt knew he was beaming ridiculously but he didn’t care. “Boy or girl?”

“Girl, sir,” Walt said proudly. “I mean, Nate. Jenna named her Elizabeth Jane, after our mom.”

“Good name,” Nate approved.

“Yup,” Walt agreed.

Nate’s eyes flicked to the clock hanging on the wall, so quickly Walt almost missed it, and he stood suddenly. “Well, I feel like this calls for a drink or two, don’t you?” he said. “How about we go down to my local dive and celebrate the arrival of Miss Elizabeth Jane? My treat.”

Walt blinked at the sudden air of tension the captain was giving off despite his smile, and stood too, a little uncertainly. “Sure, I could use a beer,” he said. It might be better if this conversation was accompanied by alcohol, anyway.

Nate smiled again, almost seeming relieved. “Excellent,” he said. “I’ll just grab my coat and – ”

He was interrupted by the sound of a key turning in the lock of the front door, followed a moment later by the door opening. “Hey, I’m home,” a female voice called, over the sound of the door closing and the lock being reengaged. _That must be Nate’s girl_ , Walt thought, and then saw that the captain had gone oddly still, smile fixed.

“I swear to fucking God, Nate,” the voice said, while several _thunks_ suggested she was tossing bags unceremoniously on the floor, “if that dickwad Schuler makes one more fucking Barbie joke in front of me I will make _him_ as anatomically correct as a Ken doll, and _then_ I will fucking mail the extra bits to Mattel. I can’t e– ”

Her rant cut off mid-word as she appeared in the doorway to the living room, saw them both, and halted as if she’d run into a wall.

 _Holy shit, Nate’s girl is a fucking supermodel_ , was the first thought Walt had, as he fought to keep his mouth from dropping open in sheer appreciation. She was crazy tall, and had long blonde hair drawn back in a ponytail, piercing blue eyes, and the kind of sculpted features you almost never saw outside the pages of fashion magazines. Not to mention, the loose _gi_ she was wearing did little to camouflage that she had a rocking body and legs that went for _days_. Wow.

She looked strangely familiar, in fact, and Walt wondered for a second if maybe she really _was_ a model. Or an actress, maybe. Had he seen her somewhere before?

Her eyes flicked from him to the captain, and Walt tore his gaze from her in time to see Nate give her a look that seemed equal parts apprehension and apology before he plastered a smile back on his face.

“Hey, honey,” Nate said to her, and if Walt had thought Nate’s cheer was forced before, it was nothing to how artificial it felt now. “This is Sergeant Walter Hasser. I served with him in Iraq. Walt,” he went on, turning to him, “this is my girlfriend, Brianna Cole.”

Walt had no idea what was making Nate so tense, but he wasn’t about to let it make him be rude. He strode over to Brianna, smiling his best sunny smile. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” he said, holding out a hand, and tried not to be disconcerted that she was a full head taller than he was.

Brianna stared at him and didn’t move for a moment. Walt felt his smile falter, and just as he was about to drop his hand she blinked rapidly a couple of times and abruptly took his hand, shaking it firmly.

“Nice to meet you, C - Sergeant,” she said. “Sorry, I was – I wasn’t expecting anyone else to be here.”

Her voice was just as lovely as the rest of her. Walt grinned, deciding to take it all in stride. “Yeah, I kind of dropped in unexpectedly,” he admitted.

“I was just about to take Walt out for a drink at Abby’s,” Nate told her, quickly, “so we won’t be in your hair this evening, promise.”

Brianna’s gaze snapped from him to Nate, and a succession of emotions flickered over her features, so swiftly Walt couldn’t interpret anything about them, except that she settled on an icy glare that would have had Walt ducking for cover if it had been aimed at _him_. It was never a good thing when a woman looked at you like that.

“Nonsense,” she said, and she might have pulled off the bright tone if her eyes hadn’t totally given it the lie. “We’ve got plenty of beer right here. And I would love to get to know one of your former Marines better.” She smiled at Nate, razor-sharp. “You can’t keep them all to yourself forever.”

“Br-” Nate stopped himself, took a breath. “Bree, I just thought – ”

“I’ll order pizza,” she said, turning away. The conversation was clearly over as far as she was concerned. “What toppings do you like, Sergeant?” she asked, heading for the kitchen.

Walt hesitated, looking to Nate for a clue on which way he should jump here, but Nate was staring at the wall, mouth tight. Walt judged that meant Brianna had won that – whatever it had been – and answered her, “I’m good with anything, ma’am, long as it ain’t peanut butter.”

“One meat-lovers and one the works it is, then,” she declared. “Why don’t you boys grab yourselves a drink while I shower?” Her tone was cheery, her words innocuous, but Walt was still watching Nate, and something about what she’d said made him flinch.

“Back in a jiff!” she trilled, and stomped down the hall and out of sight.

Right, so Walt was maybe not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Brianna was _epically_ pissed about something, and that that something seemed to have to do with Walt. Maybe she was anti-military or something, Walt thought. But then why would she be dating Nate in the first place?

Well, either way he didn’t want to make anything worse than he already had. Maybe he could arrange to meet up with the captain another time.

“Sir,” he said, not troubling to hide his worry, “I’m real sorry, I didn’t mean to upset Ms. Cole. I’m just gonna go – ”

“You’re not going anywhere, Sergeant,” Captain Fick snapped, and Walt felt his spine straighten automatically even as he realized the captain’s ire wasn’t directed at him, because Nate was glaring down the hall after his girlfriend instead. Walt felt a twinge of guilt; great, now he’d pissed off Brianna _and_ made Nate mad at her for it.

“It’s fine, sir, really, I don’t mind – ” he tried, but the captain cut him off.

“No, but _I_ mind,” he said, grimly. “Get yourself a beer and make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.”

He marched after Brianna. Walt gave some serious consideration to just slipping out of the front door, but the captain’s last words had been way too close to an order for Walt to feel comfortable ignoring them, and so in the end he hurriedly selected a beer from the fridge before darting over to sit back down on the couch.

He tried not to listen to whatever was happening down the hall, but the place was far too quiet, and he heard the captain’s voice, the words indistinct but the tone unmistakably sharp. Brianna’s voice responded with something brief and equally sharp in reply, and then there was a thump and what sounded like a dresser drawer slamming shut. Then Nate’s voice again, raised enough that the words came clear for a moment: “ – _not_ his fault, and you – ” And then a pause, and Nate’s voice fell again to an indecipherable murmur, perhaps not wanting to shout at her. Or remembering that Walt might be able to hear.

Then there was a brief stretch of silence, followed by Brianna saying something low and… dull-sounding, followed by the _click_ of a door – closed gently, not slammed. Walt pulled out his new digital camera and resolutely flicked through his stored pictures.

Nearly two more minutes passed before Nate reappeared, just as the hiss of a shower starting up came from the back. Nate gave Walt a carefully blank look before heading to the fridge and retrieving a beer for himself. He flicked the cap off but didn’t join Walt in the living room, instead leaning against the island separating the kitchen from the living room and taking a long pull from his beer.

“Sorry about that,” he said, finally. He didn’t seem angry anymore; instead he seemed… chagrined, though whether it was over blowing up at his girlfriend or just that Walt had partially overheard it, Walt wasn’t sure. “Bree’s… having a hard time, right now. With things. And I – ”

“Sir, I’m good,” Walt interrupted. “Really, you don’t need to explain nothin’ to me.” _And I would rather you didn’t_ , he didn’t add.

But he didn’t need to say it aloud, apparently, because Nate studied him a moment before quirking a rueful sort-of-smile.

“Fair enough,” Nate said, and pushed himself off the island, coming around to seat himself next to Walt on the couch. He held out his bottle, and Walt solemnly tapped it with his own.

They drank, and then Nate gestured with his chin at the camera still in Walt’s other hand. “Now, if you are any kind of decent new uncle, I’m betting there’s about 600 baby pictures on there.”

Walt flushed, but his grin came back unbidden. “Video too,” he admitted, sheepishly.

Nate grinned, and it was nearly impossible to see the thread of strain hiding underneath his otherwise sincere expression. “Thought so. Cough ‘em up, Sergeant.”

 

* * *

 

Brianna rejoined them just as the pizza arrived, her hair still damp and tousled from her shower. She was dressed casually, in jeans and a short-sleeved cotton shirt, and hadn’t bothered to put on any makeup, which surprised Walt a little. He remembered his last girlfriend, who wouldn’t even go to the grocery without “putting her face on,” and Walt had thought maybe Brianna had been pissed about having to meet a friend of Nate’s without having a chance to pretty herself up first. But apparently she didn’t care about that in the slightest.

Of course, it’s not like she really even _needed_ anything more to make her look gorgeous, Walt thought, and then gave himself a stern mental lecture about perving on his former CO’s girlfriend. She’d given him a nod and a sort of solemn smile which Walt thought was probably an acknowledgment and apology both, and Walt was happy to let the whole thing, whatever it had been, slide thankfully into the past.

She stayed quiet, perched on the armchair and listening to Nate and Walt talk idly about Walt’s most recent tour of duty while she munched through a startling four slices of pizza and drank two beers in quick succession. She didn’t look bored, exactly, but her expression was a little too blank for her to be enjoying herself. Walt decided to shut up about the Corps and try to talk about something that interested her too. Unfortunately, his small talk talents were… small, and so he was reduced to the classics.

“So, Brianna,” Walt said, “Are you going to Harvard too?” It wasn’t quite as bad as _So what do you do?_ , but it was close. Oh well.

Brianna snorted. “Hardly,” she replied, with obvious contempt. Walt’s eyebrows went up and he glanced a little nervously at Nate, but Nate only looked amused to hear his school so succinctly maligned.

“Bree has Opinions about Ivy League education,” Nate explained to Walt, the capital letter audible.

“Most of them not fit for polite company,” she acknowledged. “I prefer people who _work_ for a living. Present company excepted, of course.” She nodded solemnly to Nate.

“Of course,” Nate said, equally solemnly, but his eyes danced with mirth. He raised his beer, and she leaned over to tap hers against it, almost exactly how Nate and Walt had done earlier. Walt was a little baffled by the exchange, but he grinned anyway, relieved that the earlier tiff seemed to have totally passed.

“So what do you do, then?” Walt asked, succumbing to the cliché out of genuine curiosity now.

Brianna shifted in her seat. “Right now, I teach martial arts. Self defense, that kind of thing,” she said, shrugging. Walt’s eyebrows went up again.

“Oh, right,” he said, remembering the _gi_ she’d been wearing, but he was startled for some reason to discover she was _teaching_ a class instead of taking one.

Brianna was raising an ironic eyebrow at him for his obvious surprise, so Walt added hastily, “That’s awesome. What discipline?”

She hesitated, and then answered, “It’s multidisciplinary. It’s, uh, similar to MCMAP, actually.” Her eyes darted to Nate and then away, quickly.

“Oh!” Walt said, surprised again. “Are you – were you in the Corps too, ma’am?” He couldn’t quite help the precautionary “ma’am” he’d tacked on there.

Brianna smiled, but her smile was curiously flat. “No,” she said. “Brianna Cole has never been a member of the U.S. Marine Corps.”

Walt blinked, thinking that was kind of an odd way to phrase it, and Nate cleared his throat. “I could use another beer,” he said. “Anyone else?”

Walt nodded, and Brianna got up. “I’ll get them,” she said, and collected Walt and Nate’s empties before heading to the kitchen. Walt decided he’d beaten around the bush long enough; it was time to get to the bad stuff.

“Sir – ” he began, and at Nate’s look, amended, “Nate, I actually didn’t just come by to visit.”

“Oh?” Nate said.

“Yeah,” Walt said, and scratched the back of his neck, trying to remember how he’d decided to phrase this. “I was in town, and all, and I didn’t know if you’d heard, and I figured it would be better for you to hear it in person, you know?”

Nate’s face had gone still during this speech, and his spine straightened out of his relaxed slouch without him seeming to realize it. “Who is it, Sergeant?” he asked, quietly. Not _what happened_ , because Nate knew as well as any Marine what that kind of intro was leading up to. The only question was who it had happened to.

Walt shifted, surprised at how hard the words were to say. But then, they were still hard for him to _believe_.

“It’s the Iceman, sir,” he blurted, finally. “They called it.”

Walt had barely a second to register that Nate had gone rigid before the sound of glass shattering explosively had him leaping to his feet and whipping around, to see Brianna staring at him from the kitchen, shards of brown glass surrounding her in a starburst pattern from where she’d dropped all three empty beer bottles.

“Fuck,” she said, thickly, and dropped into a crouch, sweeping at the mess with the sides of her hands, in total disregard for the jagged edges of the broken glass. Nate jumped up and dashed to join her while Walt tried to get his heart rate under control, tried to stop reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there. Home, not Iraq. Right.

“Don’t, let me – ” Nate said to her, but she ignored him, and Nate bent down and grabbed her hands to stop her scraping at the glass.

“Brianna, _stop_ ,” he said, ordered really, and Brianna stilled, her gaze latched onto their hands. Nate held like that a moment before letting go, but Brianna didn’t go for the glass again, just straightened up, looking at nothing in particular.

“Stay still, you’ll cut yourself,” Nate said, referring to her bare feet. “I’ll get – ” and he hurried off without finishing the sentence.

There was silence for a moment, Brianna remaining still in her circle of broken glass and Walt concentrating on his breathing, and then she spoke suddenly.

“I’m sorry,” she said, indicating the glass, speaking to Walt without actually looking at him. Walt looked at her, and wondered if she had lied about not being in the Corps, or maybe she had been in some other branch of the armed forces, because he could tell she knew exactly what she was apologizing for.

“It’s fine, ma’am,” he said, and meant it. You were always jumpy for a while, after. It came with the job.

She nodded, and didn’t say anything else. It finally occurred to Walt that he should be helping with the mess too, and he circled the couch to head for the kitchen just as Nate reappeared, armed with a broom, a dustpan, and a small plastic garbage can, the kind people put in their bathrooms. Walt took the can from him, and he and Brianna bent to dispose of the larger pieces, Brianna being careful not to move her feet, while Nate began sweeping up the smaller shards and powdered bits.

They worked in silence for a moment, but then Nate said, still sweeping carefully, “I thought they were still looking for him.”

Walt grimaced. “They were,” he said. “But Nate – it’s been almost six months, without a trace of – of _anything_. You and I both know Brad would never just go UA like that.” He craned his neck to look up at Nate. “Which means something happened to him. Something bad. Something that – ” Walt stopped, then forced himself to say it. “If Brad was alive, he would have found a way back by now.”

“We don’t know that,” Nate said sharply. “He could – there could be circumstances…”

He trailed off, and Walt shook his head. “I didn’t want to believe it either, sir,” he said, “but I guess his family decided it’s time to face facts.” He stood up and moved out of the way so Nate could get to the rest of the shards.

“When is the service?” Brianna asked, her voice devoid of inflection.

“Next Saturday, in Oceanside,” Walt answered. “They’re rescinding the Article 85 charge, so he’s being given full honors.” He looked at Nate. “I thought you might want to be there, sir.”

He couldn’t quite keep a thread of accusation out of his voice on the last sentence. Walt had thought Nate and Brad had had a pretty close rapport in Iraq – as close as an enlisted man and an officer could be expected to be able to have, anyway – but even when the news that Brad had gone missing had first broken, Nate’s reaction had seemed… distant. Concerned, but not _concerned_. Walt hadn’t been the only one who’d gotten a little angry at him over that. This was the _Iceman_ , and Nate had barely seemed to care.

Maybe Walt had misjudged him. He’d certainly done so when it came to Ray. He wasn’t sure he was ever going to speak to Ray again, actually.

Nate looked at Brianna. Walt couldn’t see Nate’s face from this angle, but she stared back at him with a kind of frozen calm. They were having some sort of discussion without saying a word, but Walt had no idea what it was.

Finally Nate said, “I do want to be there, Walt. I – I’ll have to make sure I can get there, but if I can, I’ll be there. It’s the right thing to do.” He didn’t look away from Brianna once during this speech, and her expression never altered from that flat, cool stillness.

“Okay,” Walt said, slowly. There was enough unspoken subtext floating around this conversation to choke a horse, and Walt had no idea what any of it meant. “Thank you.”

Nate looked at Walt then. “No, Sergeant,” he said, “thank you. For making sure I knew.”

It wasn’t an apology, exactly, but it felt like an acknowledgement. It made Walt feel better, anyway, and he nodded to Nate.

“You’re welcome, sir.”

 

* * *

 

The moment the door closed behind a departing Walt, Brad dropped the pizza box he was ostensibly moving to the kitchen and headed for the bedroom, already shedding clothes as he went. He wanted this bra gone, now.

He felt more than heard Nate following him, but didn’t acknowledge his presence. Nate stood in the doorway and silently watched Brad move around, going through what was now his nightly routine. He knew Nate was trying to decide how best to start this conversation that Brad most distinctly had no interest whatsoever in having.

But they were going to have it, he knew, regardless of what Brad might want, so he might as well get it over with. He stopped in the middle of the bedroom and faced Nate with his hands on his hips – a thing he knew he had never done when he was a man – and gave Nate a look that said _spit it out then_.

Nate gave him a determined look in answer. “This changes nothing,” he said.

“It changes everything,” Brad replied.

“Brad – ”

“Brianna,” Brad corrected him again. “You might as well get used to it, Nate. There is no Brad Colbert. He is – ”

“Don’t say it,” Nate warned, and Brad ignored him.

“Dead,” he finished, chin up, daring Nate to disagree. Which of course he did.

“Horseshit, Brad,” Nate snapped.

“Oh?” Brad retorted. “Tell me, Nate, in six months of searching, have either you or Ray turned up _one_ lead that actually led anywhere? Or has it all been tinfoil hat loony conspiracy theories and bad Internet fiction based on cheesy television shows?”

Nate gritted his teeth. “Six months is not long enough to be conclusive – ”

“It’s long enough for everyone else to be, apparently!” Brad shouted, and silence fell in the room for a moment.

“We can’t give up, Brad,” Nate said, a note of desperation in his voice. Brad just shook his head.

“It’s _over_ , Nate,” he said, trying to sound gentle but mostly, he suspected, just sounding tired. “It’s time to face facts: there never was a way out of this in the first place. This –” he indicated himself, “ – this is how it is. That’s it.”

“But – ”

“No,” Brad said, simply. “You know it’s true, Nate.”

Nate stared at him a moment, his youthful face lining itself with – sorrow, responsibility, helpless anger, everything Brad had seen there when he watched Nate watch children in Baghdad play among live munitions in the street. He walked to the bed and sank down to sit on the edge, heavily, head bowed and hands dangling between his knees.

Brad moved to sit beside him, and reached to take Nate’s hand in his. Nate grasped it tightly and turned to hide his face in Brad’s shoulder, and Brad brought his other hand up to run his fingers through Nate’s hair, stroking, soothing.

“I should be comforting you, not the other way around,” Nate muttered, voice muffled against Brad’s shoulder, and Brad chuckled, just a little.

“You do comfort me, Nate,” he told him. “Every day.” There was no way he would ever say it aloud, but Brad was pretty sure that if Nate hadn’t been there with him through all of this, he would have eaten his gun months ago. Nate was the only part of his world left that made any sense. It comforted him beyond words that Nate would be so upset that there was no way out of this curse, when it was to Nate’s advantage in every way for there not to be.

And maybe it was because of the truth of that that Brad decided there was no reason to be coy with his feelings anymore, no reason to hold it back. Nate deserved to know everything, to have all of Brad there was left to give.

So Brad went on, “I lied to you before, you know.”

Nate raised his head. “About what?”

“I told you that I was attracted to you when we served together, that I had sexual fantasies about you.”

Nate’s brow furrowed. “You’re saying you weren’t? Didn’t?”

Brad smiled. “Oh, no, I definitely was, and did. That just wasn’t the whole truth. I didn’t tell you about the part where I was in love with you.”

Brad couldn’t quite make himself look at Nate as he confessed it, couldn’t control the way his heart squeezed in his chest to say it aloud. He was sure that Nate knew Brad loved him _now_ , but it was an entirely different thing to tell him that Brad had loved him before, without this female body to make it okay.

Nate was silent a moment, watching Brad, but Brad didn’t look up, concentrated on his feet. “How long?” Nate asked, finally.

Brad shrugged, gaze riveted to his toes. He’d let Donna at the dojo put red polish on them just two days ago. He thought they looked pretty good, actually. “There may need to be a ruling on whether it was from fifteen minutes after we first met, or if I lasted a whole half hour before falling for you.”

He sensed rather than saw Nate’s eyes widen. “Brad,” Nate breathed out, and it didn’t sound offended or put-off at all, only amazed. “I had no idea. I never even suspected…”

Brad snorted. “Of course you didn’t,” he said. “Why would you have?”

“I _should_ have,” Nate said, sounding annoyed with himself, and Brad could only smile, because how fucking _Nate_ was that?

“I would never have been so inconsiderate as to let you know that, Nate,” Brad told him, and that was also the simple truth.

Nate sucked in a breath, as if to say something, but then he didn’t, and Brad knew he was thinking of the position they’d been in, the problems it would have caused, the impossibility of it all. Even if Brad’s feelings would not have actively repulsed Nate, as he’d been so sure they would have, Nate still couldn’t have returned the feeling, so what would have been the point?

“Maybe it really is better this way,” Brad mused aloud, and felt Nate stiffen beside him.

“Better how?” he asked, like he knew the answer but didn’t want to articulate it, and Brad turned to look him in the eye reprovingly.

“At least this way I get to be with you,” Brad told him.

Nate flinched, and the look on his face was indescribable, made up of something like pain and affection and hope and sorrow all at once. “Even at the cost of who you are?” he asked, tentatively, and trust Nate to strike right to the heart of the matter.

“I wouldn’t have chosen this, no,” Brad answered, because this was the night for brutal honesty, apparently. “I’m never going to feel _right_ like this, Nate. I wish I could – I’ve _tried_ – but I can’t. This body – ” Brad searched for how to explain it. “It _wants_ to be right, it wants to be mine, and I’ll go for hours, even days like it is, like everything’s fine. And then I’ll – I’ll see myself in a mirror unexpectedly or something, and all of a sudden it’s like I remember I’m walking around in a – a funhouse mirror version of myself, and I can’t _ever_ make it – undistort, and everything is – skewed, all over again.” Brad swallowed. “And somehow that’s even worse than if it were like that all the time.”

“Brad,” Nate said, hushed, “I’m sorry. I never – I mean I knew it was – but – ”

Brad shook his head, waving it away. Of course Nate didn’t get it, how could he? “But if I have to be like this,” he said, getting back to the point, “this is the best way I could be this way. With you.”

Nate reached up and put a hand to Brad’s cheek, turning his face toward him, and leaned in to kiss him, hard. Brad returned the kiss in kind, trying to convey the truth of his words as much as he could.

Nate broke away to look him in the eye. “I love you,” he said, intently, fiercely.

Brad closed his eyes a moment. Nate had never said that aloud before. He didn’t doubt the truth of it for a second, and yet… “I know,” he said. “I love you too. Now and always.”

Nate’s brow furrowed, reading Brad as astutely as always, sensing the reservation there. “But?” he said.

He shouldn’t say it. He should just let it go, he shouldn’t put this burden on Nate. But this was the night for truth, and Brad was tired. So tired, of all the lies and half-lies and equivocations and rationalizations that was this new life.

And so he said, “You love me, Nate, but you love _this_ me. This… woman, who I am not, not really. And I know I should be happy with that, and I am really, really trying to be, but…” he shook his head. “I can’t help knowing, always, that you would never be able to love who I really am.”

Nate looked stricken, and Brad was instantly swamped by a wave of chagrin. He shouldn’t have said that. Why did he always instinctively try to fuck up everything good in his life?

“Brad…” Nate said, and trailed off.

Brad smiled, trying to take the sting out, trying to make it okay. “It’s all right, Nate,” he said. “I know how lucky I am. Most people don’t even get this much.”

“You should not have to _settle_ , Brad,” Nate said, miserably. “You deserve so much more than that.”

Brad placed a hand over Nate’s heart, spreading it to cover as much of Nate’s chest as he could, with these smaller fingers. “It’s enough that you think so, Nate.” And it almost was. Almost.

Nate’s hand came up to cover Brad’s where it pressed against him, and his other hand slipped around Brad’s neck, pulling him forward. Brad fell into the kiss gladly. No more talking, that’s right.

Let it be what it was. He would practice the name “Brianna” in his head, and he would love Nate, who loved him, and he would make do, and it would be enough.

He would make it be enough.

 

* * *

 

 _“Wakey-wakey, Nathaniel,”_ the man said, and his voice was a smirk _. “It’s time we had ourselves a little chat.”_


	9. Chapter 9

Nate snapped from sleep to awareness in a heartbeat, faster than he ever had, even in Iraq. Something had woken him, but what…?

He lifted his head from his pillow, and saw that he was in his own bedroom, that it was dark, that Brad was sleeping beside him, that everything was as it should be except there was a man sitting at the foot of the bed and he was grinning at Nate and _what the fuck_ –

Nate had hurled the covers off and launched himself at the intruder before he even woke up enough to process what was going on, training he had thought faded with time coming to the forefront in an instant, but it did him no good here. An inch from the man’s shadowed face, Nate slammed into what felt like a brick wall, even though there was nothing there, and found himself flung backwards until his back connected painfully with the headboard of the bed and his skull with the wall above.

“Now, now, Captain,” the man said, his tone chiding, “Is violence really the answer?”

Dazed, starbursts of pain sparking through him, Nate struggled to get free, to attack again, but something was holding him to the wall, like he was a bug pinned to a board. He couldn’t move more than an inch in any direction.

The man raised a hand and snapped his fingers, and all the lamps in the room came on at once, flooding the bedroom with soft incandescent light. Nate’s struggles froze as he saw the man – and it was _the man_ , there could be no doubt about it – clearly for the first time.

_Jesus_ , he thought, wildly, _he looks like… me_.

But at the same time, not like Nate at all. If he’d ever wondered what his own evil twin from a parallel dimension would look like, this would have answered his question. The man’s hair was Nate’s exact shade of not-red/not-blonde, the eyes the same green Nate saw staring back from his own mirror, and he had Nate’s damnable baby face and stupid bold nose… but it didn’t work, somehow. He had all the parts, but somehow the sum of them came out – wrong. At least Nate devoutly hoped so. He was dressed in dark clothes that seemed to _shift_ slightly when Nate looked at them, so that he couldn’t have said whether the man was wearing a suit or a sweatshirt or a T-shirt or what. It made his eyes ache.

The man saw his shocked scrutiny and grinned, spreading his arms out and twisting slightly from side to side, to give Nate the full view.

“Eh? Eh? You like?” he said, affecting a broad Baltimore accent for a moment.

Nate ruthlessly clamped down on an impending episode of what Ray had extraordinarily accurately called _the screaming meemies_ , and forced himself to raise an eyebrow at the man, in what he hoped looked like disdain.

“What, no goatee?” he asked. He was distantly proud of how calm his voice sounded.

The man blinked at him, and then threw his head back and laughed, and the sound danced up and down Nate’s skin in a way that made him want to tear it off and throw it away.

“Oh, you boys _are_ a delight, aren’t you?” the man chuckled, lapsing back into the vaguely British accent he’d previously been using. “This has all been really _far_ too entertaining.”

At “boys”, Nate suddenly realized what was missing, which was Brad leaping to the attack as swiftly as he. He looked down, to see Brad exactly where she had been when he drifted off earlier, curled up on her side, sleeping.

Or not moving, because there was no way in hell Brad would have slept through this. Nate’s heart leaped up into his throat. He couldn’t see Brad’s face from this angle.

“Brad!” he shouted, as loudly as he could. “Brad, wake up!”

Brad didn’t move, and the man winked at him and said, “This is just between us, Captain. No grunts allowed.”

“What did you do to her, you fucking asshole?” Nate snarled, wrenching futilely against his invisible bonds.

The man snorted. “Oh, relax, Nathaniel. If I just wanted to kill someone I’d find far more interesting ways to do it than _that_.” He gestured scornfully at Brad’s still figure. “Your darling _Brianna_ is just rather emphatically asleep, for the moment.”

“That’s not her name,” Nate snapped, and stilled, suddenly hearing what he’d just said. He thought of Brad as _she_ and _her_ in the privacy of his own mind, had given up trying not to at some point he now recognized as being shamefully early on, but he’d always made a point of _saying_ “he” and “him” out loud when there was no one else to hear – or no one who didn’t already know what the deal was.

He should have said “That’s not his name,” especially _now_ , especially to this – whatever thing the man was – but he hadn’t.

The man was watching him with his head tilted. “Yes,” he said with satisfaction, “those blasted pronouns are quite the conundrum, aren’t they?” He hummed a snatch of what sounded like a circus tune. “She and he, him and her, la di da,” he sing-songed. “Round and round and round she goes. Where does she stop, Nathaniel?” he asked, brightly.

Nate glared at him and didn’t supply the obvious answer. He wasn’t going to play fucking rhyming games with this bastard.

The man pouted a moment, and then rolled his eyes. “Fine, be that way,” he said, “but one would think you’d be nicer to me, Captain.”

“What in the bleeding fuck,” Nate asked, with heavy emphasis on every word, “would make _one_ think that?”

The man raised his eyebrows. “Well, how about the fact that I am the only thing in this world that can put young Brianna back the way he was?”

Nate froze.

“Yes, that got your attention, didn’t it?” The man smirked. “Perhaps now we can talk like civilized creatures, eh?”

He waved a hand languidly, and Nate felt the invisible bonds pinning him to the wall melt away, dumping him on his ass on the bed. He instantly rolled to touch Brad, turn her – _him_ over and check that he was still breathing.

“A show of bad faith is a disagreeable way to start, Nathaniel,” the man said sharply, dropping the jocular tone he’d had up till now. “I told you, Brad’s fine. Have the courtesy to take my word for it.”

Nate knew a warning when he heard one, and eased himself back away from Brad. He’d had time to confirm Brad was breathing easily and appeared to be in no obvious distress, and that was good enough for now. “With all due respect,” he said, “you’ve given me precious little reason to trust your word thus far.”

“Poppycock,” the man snapped, and this was bad because he actually appeared angry now. “I keep my word, Captain. Always. If I didn’t I wouldn’t even be here right now.”

Nate watched him carefully. The man had been genuinely upset at Nate’s suggestion that he was a liar, and Nate filed that intel away for consideration. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Why are you here now?”

“I should think that would be obvious,” the man told him, a little petulantly. “Is a contract not the same as one’s word, yet even more so?”

Nate stared at him, confused, and the man huffed a put-upon sigh. “The _terms_ , dear Captain,” he explained, as to a slow child. “Once they are fulfilled, the contract ends. That’s how it works.”

Nate’s eyes widened. “You mean…”

The man waved carelessly. “Yes, all back as it was before, down to the slightly overenthusiastic sperm count, as soon as the new day dawns. Exit Brianna Cole,” he said, with a flourish, “and enter Brad Colbert. _Et voilà_.”

Nate’s throat closed up, as waves of conflicting emotion flooded him. Hope and excitement clashed with pain and a sense of impending loss, overlaid with guilt. This was what Brad wanted, what he had dreamed of, what he _needed_. And yet…

And yet it meant that this life, this safe haven of love and companionship and sharing with someone who fit with him so perfectly, would be over. And oh, he was so selfish to mourn that loss, and yet he couldn’t help it.

And then he was angry, so angry, because – “Why now?” he demanded. “Why the hell would you wait till _now_ to change him back? He’s been declared _dead_. They’re having a fucking _funeral service_ for him next week. Do you have any idea what trouble, what pain it will cause for him to reappear _now_ and have to put his life back together?”

The more he thought about it, the worse it seemed. No matter what cockamamie story he and Brad and Ray might come up with to substitute for the truth, it wouldn’t make up for the fact that to Brad’s family and friends, not to mention to the USMC, he had just disappeared without explanation for half a year. Even if his loved ones eventually forgave him, Brad’s career, the one he loved and missed so fiercely, was still almost certainly ruined. The JAG Corps might even decide to reinstate the Article 85 indictment rather than merely give him a dishonorable discharge. Desertion during wartime was a very serious charge; Brad might even end up in _prison_.

The man _tsk_ ed reprovingly. “I really don’t know what on earth gave you the idea that I am averse to causing pain and trouble, my dear Captain, because I can assure you that it is, in fact, my bread and butter. But as it happens, in this case the timing is entirely your fault.”

“ _My_ fault!”

“Indeed!” the man exclaimed. “If you hadn’t waited so long to fulfill the terms, this would have been over _months_ ago.” He grinned. “But then, talking about your feelings is so _hard_ , isn’t it, Captain?” he said, voice dripping with mock sympathy.

“What the hell are you – ” Nate began, and shut his mouth with a snap as it hit him. As he remembered what he’d said earlier that night, that he’d never said out loud before.

Oh, fuck.

“Yes, now you’ve hit upon it!” the man laughed. “You finally said the magic words. So to speak.” He mimed a golf clap in Nate’s direction. “Congratulations.”

Nate felt his lip curl in loathing even as he stared at the man in shock, which seemed to amuse the other greatly. Then he glanced at Brad, shook his head, and laughed again. “You know, for someone so ridiculously pretty – in either form – our Sergeant Colbert has some truly astounding self-esteem issues, doesn’t he? It never even _occurred_ to him, afterward, to think that what he might have asked for wasn’t your dick, dear Captain, but your love. Because how would he have ever dared to ask for such a thing? But _in vino_ – or in two fifths of whiskey – _veritas_ , evidently.” The man shook his head. “Poor, poor Bradley. The irony is almost too delicious even for _me_.”

Nate felt sick. _Irony_ didn’t even begin to cover it. Brad had been set up even more than they had ever suspected, and so had Nate. It was positively diabolical, no pun intended: the moment Brad got what he had made the deal for, they would both lose what had made it possible in the first place.

Nate longed to lunge across the bed and choke the man to death with his bare hands, and only the certain knowledge that it would be useless kept him from trying. Instead he quoted, flatly, sarcastically, “‘Men's wretchedness in sooth I so deplore/Not even I would plague the sorry creatures more’.”

“You flatter me,” the man said, dryly, “but I’m afraid that would qualify as a lie, coming from me.”

Nate didn’t doubt it. His stomach hurt as if he had been kicked square in the gut. Which he had been, in a way. “So if it’s all done and finished,” he asked, dully, “what are you waiting for? Why are you talking to me? You just wanted to rub it in?”

“Well, that’s part of it, certainly,” the asshole smirked, “but mostly I wanted to offer you a deal of your own.”

Nate’s head snapped up, and the man quirked his eyebrows in mockery at his shock. “Don’t look so surprised, Nathaniel. We all of us have a job to do, and I’m doing mine. Must keep busy, you know. Idle hands making the devil’s work, and all that.” He chuckled appreciatively at his own joke.

“How in the fuck could you think I’d make a deal with you after how the last one turned out?” Nate demanded. “Do I really look that stupid to you?”

“Oh, it’s never about stupidity, dear Captain,” the man replied. “It’s always about desperation.”

“I’m not that desperate, either,” Nate retorted, and the man raised an eyebrow.

“You sure about that?” he asked. “You said it yourself: Brad coming back now will cause a world of trouble, for him and everyone connected to him. What kind of life will he have, after? Will it even be worth it? But on the other hand,” he said, turning one hand palm up, “how many problems would it solve for everyone if Brad were to stay exactly as he is now?”

“No,” Nate blurted immediately, appalled, but the man held up a hand, and something choked Nate silent.

“Hear me out, Captain. You already know the possible consequences. And while it is admittedly a very remote chance that they would _actually_ invoke the death penalty for deserting, do you really want to take that chance? Or the chance of Brad rotting away in a military prison? And even if neither of those things happen, his career will be ruined and his family and friends will hate him. Wasn’t that what you yourself were thinking, hmm?”

Nate’s lips tightened, but he didn’t try to respond. The man smirked as if he knew the answer anyway.

“Not to mention,” the man added, “the possible repercussions for _you_. Tell me, what do you think will happen if someone thinks to wonder what happened to Brianna Cole, when she disappears? She’s well-liked at the dojo, isn’t she? Plenty of people to miss her, yes? Who do you think will be the first to fall under suspicion, if she’s suddenly gone one day and is never heard from again? Why, didn’t one of your own Marines see you have an altercation with her just today? How do you think that will look?”

Nate felt the hold on his throat release, but he remained silent, shaken. The man cocked his head, gaze boring into Nate’s, seeming to see right through him.

“And let’s not forget about _love_ ,” he went on, tapping his chest, over his heart. “What will it do to you, Nathaniel Fick, to lose this?” He gestured at Brad’s form, still slumbering on the bed, and Nate turned unwillingly to look, at the face which had become so dear and familiar to him. The face that had become _home_ to him.

“You love her, after all, don’t you?” he said. Nate didn’t answer immediately, and his tone sharpened. “Don’t you?”

Nate considered lying, but what was the point? “Yes,” he said, his voice cracking.

The other nodded. “Yes. And she loves you. And I can assure you, what you two have? Is not the kind of thing you come across every day. I’ve been around more than long enough to know the truth of that.” He leaned forward, voice intent. “You won’t ever find anything like Brianna again, Nate. Ever.”

Nate closed his eyes, because he knew it was true. And if he’d felt like he’d been kicked in the gut before, now it felt like someone was thrusting red hot pokers into his heart. He hadn’t known that pain that wasn’t actually physical could _hurt_ so badly.

“What kind of justice is there,” the man asked softly, “in destroying such a beautiful thing, in tearing down what you’ve worked so hard to build? Should not true love conquer all? What’s past is past; let it stay that way. Wouldn’t it be better to go forward, with things as they are, to keep building? To be together, as you were so clearly meant to be?”

Nate shook his head, but it wasn’t in refusal, just denial, and the man knew it. He let Nate stew for a few moments, before adding casually, “She’s in the prime of her childbearing years, you know.”

Nate’s eyes snapped to his, and the man gave him an encouraging smile. “Yes, exactly. She could give you a son, or a daughter. Or both. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Just imagine the children you would make together!”

Nate did, and something like a dry sob escaped his throat. The man sat back, satisfied.

“That’s what I can offer you, Nate,” he said. “I can offer you your happiness, and Brianna’s too, if you think about it.”

His voice was low, coaxing, persuasive. It settled into Nate’s mind like a needle in the groove of a record, playing its own song, drowning everything else out. “Come now, why hesitate? Brianna’s contract with me is over, but there’s nothing to prevent me drawing up a new one with you. You can pick up right where hers left off. You can be together. You can be _happy_. All you have to do is say the word.”

_So this is temptation_ , Nate thought, vaguely. He could barely hear his own thought over the dull roaring in his ears. He stared at the woman in the bed with him, in their bed, the one they’d picked out together, the one he’d secretly believed, somewhere deep inside, that they would always share.

“She would never forgive me,” he mumbled, and something in him cringed that he was considering this enough to even voice the objection. But it was so hard to think, and he _wanted_ , he wanted to be with her so badly, he loved her so much, and didn’t he deserve this?

Didn’t he deserve to be happy, to be with the woman… with the person… the woman he loved?

But it was not… there was something… she would never forgive…

The man shrugged. “Why would she need to forgive you,” he said, “when she’ll never even know?”

_She’ll never even know_ , Nate thought, and the words made something shatter in his head.

It was crisp and precise, like crystal breaking, like the crack of ice freeing a frozen river in spring thaw. And suddenly Nate’s head was clear, the roaring clouding his mind gone, because the only thing he thought in response to that was _NO_.

No.

He could never do that to Bri– No.

He could never do that to _Brad_.

Jesus, had he really almost been about to agree to it? To doing that to her – no, to _him_?

He didn’t know if there really was a hell – though recent events certainly seemed in favor of the theory – but to do such a thing, to act in such a monumentally – in such a _monstrously_ selfish way, would surely condemn him there in a heartbeat. And he would deserve it.

No. He wouldn’t do it, and he opened his mouth to tell the man to go to hell, literally or otherwise.

_But_ … he hesitated.

He hesitated, because there was no way he could agree to the deal, but there was still all the rest, all the practical reasons why it had seemed so compelling. Nate’s own feelings were irrelevant, but what about all the ways in which Brad’s life would be destroyed if he changed back now? Was there no way around that? Letting Brad’s contract simply expire would be the safest way out, but was it the _best_ way? Was there no way to fix this?

The man’s eyes narrowed, watching Nate, seeming to sense his pitch had gone awry, and Nate thought furiously, trying to divine the right path. Was there any way to make a deal that _wouldn’t_ turn out to be a monkey’s paw, or was it inherent in the nature of the thing?

What _was_ the nature of the thing?

_The deals are selfish_ , he thought, suddenly. _They play on people’s greed, on their predisposition to want things for themselves, to be willing to screw other people over for their own gain. It’s a_ punishment _for that greed. You get what you want, but the price makes it useless, or not worth what you paid._

If he had agreed to keep Brad as Brianna permanently, he was suddenly sure that somehow the deal would have backfired on them both horribly. But even if it wouldn’t have, he thought, he still couldn’t have done it.

_But if you ask for something that_ isn’t _selfish,_ he thought, _something that doesn’t benefit you at all… what happens then?_

“You make an interesting offer,” Nate said, slowly, still feeling his way through the idea he was having, “but I have a counterproposal.”

The man didn’t move, but there was suddenly a wary quality to his stillness. “Oh?” he said.

“Yes,” Nate said. He took a breath, and said, “What would it cost me to have you negate the contract with Brad altogether?”

The man frowned. “What do you mean, negate it?”

“I mean, _negate_ it,” Nate said. “Make it so it never happened in the first place.”

The man’s eyebrows shot up, and Nate thought that if nothing else, he could be proud that he had surprised the creature. Nate leaned forward, as intent as the other had been a moment before.

“Here’s what I want,” Nate said, deliberately. “I want you to make it so that the last six months never occurred. I want Brad to walk into that pub on that night, and for you to _not be there_. I want you to never meet him, and never make a deal with him. Not then, and not ever. That’s the deal I want.”

The man blinked at Nate in astonishment, whether frank or feigned it was impossible to be sure. “You honestly think I can rewrite history, just like that? Just hit the rewind button on six whole months of time?”

Nate raised an eyebrow. “Are you telling me you can’t?”

The man opened his mouth, and then shut it again, looking disconcerted. He tilted his head a little, studying Nate as if he’d never seen anything like him before.

“You do realize what you’re asking for, right?” he said, at length. He nodded to Brad’s slumbering figure. “You realize you will never have had any of this, that none of it will ever have happened?”

Nate felt his throat tighten, but he fought the pain down, refused to let it show. “Yes,” he said.

The man’s brow furrowed in what Nate thought just might be honest confusion. “But why?”

Nate tried to think of a way to say it that didn’t sound like an after-school special cheesefest, but he couldn’t, so he said it anyway. “Loving someone means that their well-being is more important to you than your own,” he said, flatly. “I will not hold Brad’s life and choices hostage to my own happiness. It would make that happiness worthless. Worse than worthless; it would make it – evil. I won’t be part of that.”

The man stared at him in what almost seemed like a daze for a moment, but then he blinked and came back to himself, raising his eyebrows again. “That’s a big word, evil,” he said, but his voice wasn’t mocking for once, like he’d lost the energy for it. “Be careful how you use it.”

“We can argue semantics, or we can cut a deal,” Nate said. “Which is it?”

The man tapped a finger against his lip, eyeing him. “I can sweeten the original deal,” he offered. “I can make it so Brianna never remembers being Brad at all. I can make it so she is perfectly happy – ”

“ _No!_ ” Nate shouted, and the man looked affronted, then disgusted.

“Fine,” he said, grouchily, “but this isn’t going to come cheap, you know.”

Nate carefully didn’t let his reaction show, which was probably good, since his reaction was tangled somewhere between wanting to cheer and wanting to vomit. “I didn’t figure it would,” Nate answered him, which was only the truth.

“Let’s talk price, then,” the man said, and he was clearly irritated. “What are you willing to pay for Sergeant Colbert’s so-precious _happiness_?”

“Anything,” Nate said, and the man’s jaw actually dropped.

“What?” he said, incredulously.

“I said, anything,” Nate repeated. Just for effect, he shrugged.

He appeared to have actually struck the man speechless. His jaw worked for a moment, before he finally spat, “You’re mad. You can’t just – What if I decide to demand your _life_ in exchange?”

“If that’s what it takes, I’ll pay it,” Nate said, evenly, and he meant it. It was only logical; if the deal couldn’t be selfish, it couldn’t be selfish in any way. He had been willing to die for his country, after all, and somehow, beating this bastard at his own game seemed like just as noble a cause. Especially if it meant the life of someone he loved would be saved, or at least restored. Two for the price of one wasn’t a bad deal.

It was hardly any crazier than getting out of a Humvee to direct traffic in the midst of an ambush, when you thought about it.

The man stared at him some more. “You’re mad,” he repeated.

“Maybe,” Nate told him ( _definitely_ , he thought), “but it’s my choice to make. And unlike Brad, I’m sober enough to understand what it is I’m agreeing to.”

To his surprise, the man flinched at that last. Nate wondered what that meant, but decided to leave it aside for now.

The man was still staring at him. “So you’re actually offering to pay any price for this. Any price at all.”

“With one caveat, yes,” Nate said.

“Ah, here we go,” and the man started to grin again. “What is your _caveat_?”

“The price can only affect me,” Nate said. “No one else.” _I won’t let you hurt anyone else for this_.

“Oh, for _fuck’s sake_ ,” the man snarled, and jumped to his feet. Then he actually began to pace, growling a string of words to himself that didn’t come from any language Nate recognized, but he knew profanity when he heard it.

“You seem upset,” Nate observed, unable to resist.

The man whirled and pointed a furious finger at him. “If you want to keep that tongue in your head I suggest you stop wagging it, you bloody, stupid, _bloody_ human!”

And even though he knew the thing could almost certainly literally fulfill that threat, somehow it held no fear for Nate anymore. He didn’t know if he was truly winning this game, but he certainly seemed to have thrown the man off of his. Still, there was no point in tempting fate (hah), so Nate put a firm lid on his rising hope and his sarcastic remarks both, and waited.

But he hoped anyway, even if it was a uniquely painful kind of hope. If this worked, he would lose Brianna, lose knowing that Brad loved him, lose all of the pain and joy and strangeness and wonder of the last half year, but at least he wouldn’t _know_ he’d lost those things. And Brad would be okay, or as okay as he’d ever been, and free to live his life the way he wanted. And assuming the price was not the ultimate one, Nate’s life would go forward too, and never have been wrenched off the rails it had previously been running on.

That should have been a happy thought.

Nate realized the man had stopped pacing and was staring at him again, not in consternation anymore but in sudden, unsettling speculation. Nate returned the stare, making his face as blank as he ever had in the Corps.

The man stared some more, and then snorted, suddenly. “Certain instructions begin to make more sense to me, now,” he murmured to himself. “Who would have thought it?”

“Instructions?” Nate asked.

“Indeed,” the man said, eyes still sharp upon him. “You’re a dangerous man, aren’t you, Nathaniel Fick?”

Nate tried not to let his surprise show. “No more than any other,” he replied, honestly.

“Uh-huh,” the man said, sounding distinctly unconvinced. Nate had no idea what he was driving at, and decided he didn’t care.

“So do we have a deal or not?” he asked.

The man’s lips twisted in a sneer. “You’re a clever one, Fick, I’ll give you that, and a formidable opponent, but you don’t know nearly as much as you think you do.”

Nate didn’t think now would be a good time to point out that he in fact had no idea whatsoever of what he was doing, and merely glared levelly at the man in response.

“You may think you’ve hamstrung me, but there are more ways than just the obvious to make a man suffer.” He smiled at Nate, thin as a razor, and Nate thought of a shark, circling in on its prey.

“All right, Captain,” he said, “I accept your proposal. But here are _my_ terms: you agree to the price sight unseen. You agree without forehand knowledge of what you’ll pay for what you want.”

Nate’s first impulse was to reject this outright, because agreeing to terms without knowing what they were beforehand was pretty much the epitome of A Bad Idea, even when your opponent _wasn’t_ … whatever the man was.

But then again, he considered, Nate had already put no bounds on the price as it was. If he was going to agree to the price regardless, why would it make a difference to know what it was ahead of time?

“I’ll agree,” Nate told him, “on two conditions. First, that the lack of foreknowledge itself will go toward the price, and second, that my caveat be explicitly acknowledged.”

“Yes, yes,” the man waved a hand, “no one else pays, just you, whatever.”

“Not _whatever_ ,” Nate snapped. “That holds absolutely, or no deal. _No one else pays_. Including Brad.”

The man locked eyes with him, and Nate was made very sharply aware of the fact that this thing really, really wanted to kill him. He was _pissed_.

Nate didn’t understand why it hadn’t killed him already, to be honest, or at least not fucked him up. Except he suspected that, for all its power, the man was circumscribed by some apparently very strict rules when it came to this contract thing. That made sense, to the part of Nate’s brain that half-remembered childhood fairy tales and folk ballads.

“Fine,” the other gritted out eventually. “No one else pays. Including Brad. So stipulated.”

“And in return for the price I pay,” Nate said, just to be sure, “the last six months are erased, back to the night Brad met you. And that meeting never happens.”

The man made a face that was more baring his teeth than it was a smile. “Precisely.”

“Good,” Nate said. “Done. So, do I sign something, or what?”

“We’ll shake on it,” the man said, and gestured at Nate’s side. Nate looked down, and saw a small but ornate dagger lying next to him on the bed.

_Figures_ , Nate thought, and picked it up. He looked up to see the man holding a dagger of his own, identical to the one in Nate’s hand. He watched as the man sliced open his own left index finger, and smeared a stripe of blood from the wound across the palm of his right hand. He held up the hand and quirked an eloquent eyebrow in Nate’s direction.

Nate ignored the expectation there, and instead leaned over to place a soft kiss on Brad’s unresponsive lips. He didn’t think about how it was going to be his last. “I love you,” he whispered. At least he’d had a chance to tell Brad that, before.

“Sometime _this_ century would be nice,” the man snapped, and Nate straightened reluctantly. Yes, time to get this over with.

Nate took a deep breath, and cast one more look in Brad’s direction, drinking in that face as much as he could. _Please, let me be doing the right thing,_ he prayed, to who or what he didn’t know, and pressed the edge of the blade against the pad of his left index finger.

The dagger was razor sharp, and Nate’s skin parted under it like tissue paper, rich red welling up instantly. Nate hurriedly smeared the blood across his right palm before clenching his left hand shut, to stem the flow.

He held his right hand out to the man, not letting himself hesitate. No thinking; thinking when under fire is what gets you killed. His decision had been made, his course determined, and the only thing left was to act on it.

“As agreed,” the man said, “so shall it be done.”

He locked eyes with Nate, and instinctively Nate responded. “As agreed,” he repeated, “So shall it be done.”

The man leaned forward. “Enjoy, Captain,” he hissed, vindictively, and clasped Nate’s outstretched hand in his own, and the world turned inside out.

_Brad_ , Nate thought, or maybe said aloud, or maybe screamed, but he couldn’t tell because he was being torn apart, molecule by molecule, being repositioned, _rewritten_ , and there was only blind white pain, and then there wasn’t even that much, and he was gone.


	10. Chapter 10

“Oi! Watch your bloody step, you great ox!”

Brad pushed himself off the idiot who’d crashed into him, maintaining his balance with shameful difficulty. He had definitely had way too much whiskey tonight.

“I ought to smack you one, you tosser!” the idiot yelled, clearly not getting the concept of when to let something go. Brad straightened to his full height and ignored the spinny sloshiness inside him in order to aim his best Iceman stare down at the idiot.

“My apologies,” Brad said, mildly. “We don’t need to make anything of this, do we?”

The idiot craned his neck to look up at Brad’s face, then down at the rest of him, and the belligerent sneer dropped off his face rather swiftly.

“Er,” he said. “No. No, we’re good, mate.”

“Glad to hear it,” Brad said. “Mate.”

The idiot offered him a grimace that might possibly have been meant to be a smile, and edged around Brad.

“Bloody Yank,” he hissed, and scurried off like his ass was on fire. Brad would have rolled his eyes, but that would have been giving the idiot more thought than he was worth. He was far more interested in whether he was on the street he thought he was.

Fucking _London_. He didn’t care how much history it had, the Brits ought to tear it down anyway and build a city that actually made fucking _sense_ , so that visiting American Marines who needed to find a certain kind of pub could damn well do so even if they _were_ fucking ten sheets to the – Ah.

It was a discreet sort of place, quiet, not one of those glitter-crusted twink-laden bass-pounding sweat-and-grind shitholes that made Brad want to gnash his teeth on general principle. The pub wasn’t going to win any cleanliness awards anytime soon, but that was hardly Brad’s concern. He knew what he was here for, and he had a much more adequately hygienic hotel room to offer for it.

He thought of Davies and his stupid fucking announcement and stupider fucking grin, and was abruptly furious that he wasn’t drunk enough to have forgotten about it yet. He needed more alcohol. He needed a warm body to fuck, a cock to suck, anything to get him out of his own stupid memories for a moment, to let him forget how much he wanted what he could never –

_Shut the fuck up, Colbert._

He absolutely did _not_ weave as he made his way to the bar and ordered, what else, whiskey, since switching to anything else at this point would be a supremely bad idea. Of course, drinking more of anything at this point was probably a supremely bad idea, but fuck it.

“That looks like it might be a bad idea, mate, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

Brad swiveled his head to the left, and blinked at the man standing next to him. Had he been standing there a moment ago?

“I do mind, actually,” Brad told him, and tossed his whiskey back in one gulp. The other man laughed in a rueful sort of way.

“Fair enough,” he said. “You black out in a place like this, though, you might not like where you wake up. Just so you know.”

Brad raised an eyebrow at him, or thought he did. It was kind of hard to feel his face at the moment. “Is that a threat?”

“Not at all,” the other said, unfazed. “Just some advice from a friend.”

“I don’t recall making friends with you, friend,” Brad said, possibly a little nonsensically.

“I’m sure you don’t,” the other said, easily, “but nevertheless, your friend I most certainly am.”

Brad turned to face him fully, and examined the guy’s face, trying to see if he recognized him. There _was_ something vaguely familiar about him, but for the life of him Brad couldn’t put his finger on what it was. The details of the other man’s countenance kept slipping away from Brad’s ability to categorize them. Maybe he really _had_ had too much whiskey. Mentally, Brad shrugged.

“Whatever,” he said. “Want to fuck, friend?”

The guy smiled. “I’m flattered,” he said, “but no.”

Brad had a sudden disorienting sensation of… something. Not quite déjà vu; more like time itself had… hiccupped, for a moment, before carrying on.

Brad blinked, and thought, _okay, no more whiskey after this_ , and focused on the guy again. “Why not?” he demanded, absolutely not petulantly.

“I told you, I’m your friend,” the guy said. He tilted his head. “And as your friend, I think you deserve something better than an anonymous drunken fuck with a random stranger in a grimy pub.”

Now Brad was definitely affronted. “How the hell would you know?”

The guy shrugged. “I know all kinds of things. The question is, why don’t you?”

Brad blinked again, slowly. “Why don’t I what?”

“Why don’t _you_ know you deserve better?” he asked, gently. “Because I can assure you, Brad, you do.”

The sentiment should have meant nothing, coming from, as was pointed out, a random stranger in a grimy pub, but Brad felt his heart give an odd, painful squeeze at the words. He looked away, trying to get a grip on himself. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“On the contrary,” the guy said, “I know far more about what I’m talking about than you do.” He leaned forward, intent. “Jessica was the fool, Brad, not you, for throwing away something so rare and precious as your devotion. Her and Steven both. They never even understood what they had in the first place. It is they, not you, who were not worthy of it.”

Brad stared at him, dazed. He knew, distantly, that there was something not right about this person knowing about Jess and Steven, about him knowing Brad’s name for that matter, but that knowledge was completely unimportant in the face of Brad’s inexplicable certainty that he was speaking nothing but the truth.

_But how can that be?_ he thought, confusedly. _I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t deserve…_

He blinked, shocked. Where had that come from? His vision blurred, and he realized to his further astonishment that he was on the verge of actual tears. What the fuck?

The guy put a hand over Brad’s where it rested on the bar, and Brad instantly knew it as a gesture of comfort, rather than the come-on he would normally have assumed it to be. Brad had a sudden memory of being very small, and curling up on his mother’s lap as she wrapped her arms around him, all warmth and safety and sunlight.

“ _You deserve better_ , Brad,” the guy said, his voice full of quiet, inexorable conviction, and Brad’s breath hitched on what was absolutely fucking not a choked sob.

“Why are you telling me this?” Brad forced out, trying to make the ridiculous lump in his throat disappear before he completely disgraced himself. He was the goddamn Iceman, for Christ’s sake; he hadn’t cried since he was eight years old. What the hell was happening to him?

The guy leaned back a little, looking rueful. “Normally I wouldn’t be,” he said. “At least not so… directly. But there’s been some… hm, _rule-bending_ going on recently, and that gives me a bit more latitude than I might have otherwise.”

“Now _I_ have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about,” Brad informed him, and the guy laughed.

“I know,” he said, kindly. “It’s still true, though.”

Brad shook his head, more in sudden exhaustion than in denial, and stiffened in surprise when the guy suddenly cupped his face in both hands, forcing Brad to meet his eyes. The guy’s eyes were every color, and Brad vaguely wondered how that could be even as he froze, riveted by that gaze as a nail to a lodestone.

“Popular opinion to the contrary, certain kinds of sacrifices demand compensation,” the guy said, softly but with a kind of terrible intensity. “And certain kinds of wrongs demand to be righted. I cannot give you guarantees, Brad, nor even open guidance, but I can give you one piece of advice which I suggest very strongly that you follow: when an opportunity for honesty arises, _do not spurn it_.”

It felt like the words were burning themselves into his brain, and Brad actually staggered a little under their force. He blinked up at the guy – was he actually taller than Brad was? – and somehow wasn’t even surprised when the guy bent and pressed a chaste, loving kiss to his forehead.

“Now,” the guy said, and his voice was wry and exasperated and affectionate all at once, “go home and sleep it off, you idiot.”

 

* * *

 

Brad woke in his hotel room, and immediately wished he hadn’t.

This might just possibly be the hangover to end hangovers. Über-hangover. The mother of all hangovers. It felt like every single cell of his body was having its own separate pounding headache. Which didn’t even make sense, not that Brad gave a shit about that at this point.

He groaned and turned over painfully. He checked the digital clock on the nightstand, and realized it was only eight o’clock. Which was clearly far too early in the morning to be waking up after a night of –

Brad abruptly remembered how that sentence ended, and was wide awake between one breath and the next, because _what the actual fuck_.

He laid there for nearly fifteen minutes, blinking at the ceiling and prodding gingerly at his memories of the preceding night, before coming to the conclusion that they were at least 95% alcohol-induced bullshit. He didn’t remember everything the weird guy had said to him, but what he _did_ remember, there was no way the guy would have said, because no one actually talks like that, even in England. Not to mention, he didn’t remember how he’d gotten from the bar back to the hotel at all. So clearly he’d pickled way too many of his brain cells last night to rely on anything they had to say on the matter.

Plus, the Iceman did not fucking cry. He did not come within visual _range_ of crying, either.

Ergo, bullshit. None of that had happened.

Brad nodded to himself, and then groaned as the move set off fresh blasts of pain in his head. Fuck. He hauled himself up to go look for the Advil, and took four of the things before flopping back into bed to sleep some more.

 

* * *

 

He woke again hours later to find that he’d missed a bunch of calls on his cell.

One was from his mother, two were from Ray, one was from a number with a 310 area code which Brad vaguely recalled as belonging to one of those HBO people, and there were no less than five calls from a 617 area code number Brad didn’t recognize at all, but was probably either a wrong number, or some reporter angling to rehash the same things he’d said a million times already since Wright’s book had come out. At any rate, whoever it was hadn’t bothered to leave a message, and if they couldn’t put in even that minimum amount of effort they certainly didn’t deserve any from Brad’s end. Especially not if he had to pay international rates.

He erased the notifications and went in search of bad food. If there was one thing England could be counted upon for, after all, it was greasy, awful, hangover-killing food, and Brad saluted them for it. Long live the Queen.

 

* * *

 

His phone buzzed again while he was scarfing down bacon and coffee ( _coffee_ , not fucking tea, thank you) in some ridiculously overpriced diner in the West End, and it was Ray, of course. He debated ignoring it, but Ray only got more persistent the more he was ignored, so Brad might as well get it over with.

“ _Dude!_ ” Ray’s voice crackled at him from 4,000 miles away, “ _You’re okay!_ ”

Brad paused. That exclamation had sounded unexpectedly… sincere. “Was there some reason to believe I wasn’t, Ray?”

“ _Huh? Oh. No, none. I just worry, on account of how you’re so fragile and scared of the big bad world_ ,” Ray replied, cheerfully and almost convincingly, and Brad frowned a moment before mentally shrugging and dismissing it.

“ _But anyway,_ _what the fuck, Brad, ignoring your Ray-Ray so callously? You don’t call, you don’t write, you don’t send flowers_ …”

“Well, Raymond,” Brad said calmly, “I figured your calendar was full, what with all the livestock in Missouri needing your loving attention. Those goats won’t fuck themselves, Person. You have a _duty_ here.”

“ _Excuse me,_ Bradley, _but the main livestock of the great state of Missouri are hogs and cattle_ ,” Ray shot back. “ _If you’re going to accuse me of that sweet, sweet bestiality, at least get your facts right_.”

Brad allowed himself a grin, since Ray wasn’t there to see it. “When you’re right, you’re right, Ray. Please extend my sincerest apologies to Lulubelle and Miss Piggy.”

“ _I’m gonna tell Sarah you said that_ ,” Ray threatened.

“Assuming ‘Sarah’ is the woman you have somehow coerced into putting up with your deviant, backwoods, trailer trash ass, your infidelity is _her_ problem, not mine.”

“ _We have a very open relationship_.”

“Please, do completely fail to give me any details.”

“ _You are the exact opposite of fun, you know that?_ ”

“Ray,” Brad said, “was there any point to this very expensive international call other than filling me in on the finer details of your extraordinarily fucked-up social life?”

“ _If I say ‘no’, are you going to hang up on me?_ ”

“Indubitably.”

“ _Jeez, fine_ ,” Ray mock-grumbled. “ _As it happens, I need your address_.”

“For what?” Brad asked.

“ _Well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?_ ”

“Ray, you _have_ my address,” Brad said wearily. “And I feel this is a good point at which to remind you that it is in fact illegal to send biohazardous material through international mail. As a further data point, that category definitely includes any and all of your personal bodily fluids.”

“ _What the CDC doesn’t know won’t hurt ‘em_ ,” Ray replied blithely, “ _but whatever, that’s not the issue. I have your_ regular _address, my monkey-chunk, but I want to know where you are_ now _. This is a time-sensitive package, homes_.”

_Monkey-chunk?_ “I am trying and failing to find words to adequately express my deep and abiding suspicion at this moment,” Brad remarked.

“ _Aw, come on, Brad_ ,” Ray wheedled. “ _Have some faith in your favorite ex-RTO. You know I would never send you anything you wouldn’t just_ looooove.”

Brad sighed. His curiosity would be the death of him one day. “Fine,” he said, and gave Ray his hotel and room number in London. He was going to regret this, he just knew it.

 

* * *

 

He expected a depraved sex toy of some kind, or on the more benign spectrum, perhaps a care package containing the kind of horrifically preprocessed foodstuffs and cheap beer the average Midwesterner would consider palatable, because Ray would unquestionably find that hilarious to inflict upon him. But two days went by and nothing arrived, and so Brad assumed Ray had gotten distracted by something shiny and forgotten all about his joke, and then Brad pretty much forgot about it himself.

He spent the first day after his ill-fated (or odd-fated) pub crawl nursing his epic hangover, and calling his mother back like the good son he was. He pretended not to hear the surprise in her voice that he had returned her call so promptly. It was unusual that he had this much leisure time to chat with her, and so they ended up on the phone for almost two hours while she told him all the about the latest goings-on in the family, carefully not mentioning how much she missed him but the sentiment obvious in every word she said. The call was going to cost him an arm and a leg, but it was worth it.

The next day he spent doing deliberately touristy things, though he drew the line at going to the Tower of London or the giant Ferris wheel, because there is only so much cliché a man can stand. But he went to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, and then just kind of wandered around, poking his head into random shops and looking at all the Britishness.

That night he headed out, fully intending, having been stymied before, to locate a prostitute or a willing freebie and work off some of his frustration, like any good Marine on libo would do. He got as far as an appropriately seedy bar ( _not_ the one he’d been to before), and then… sat there, nursing the same beer for over an hour.

_Just go, just do it, what is the problem?_ He asked himself numerous times over the course of that hour. And there was no problem, except that he just… didn’t want to do it. Every time, the thought of approaching someone led to an overwhelming surge of ennui, like why was he bothering? What would be the point, besides a quick release that would mean less than nothing?

Which puzzled Brad mightily, since a meaningless release had never been a problem for him _before_ , but evidently it was one now, and after another half hour he gave up and went back to his hotel room with nothing to show for his efforts. He felt like he should be more upset about the way the night had turned out, but he found himself shrugging philosophically instead. _Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood_ , he thought, and grinned at himself. Shit, he was turning into a girl. He watched ridiculous British television for a while, and then went to sleep.

The next day he went to Hyde Park and watched various morons in Speakers’ Corner try to convince anyone of anything, and amused himself by imagining what Ray would have to say about several of the philosophies being espoused, and how likely those opinions would be to lead to events that would land them both in jail. The probability of the latter was, unsurprisingly, fairly high. Brad chuckled to himself and wandered on, feeling oddly at peace with himself and the world.

In fact, he realized, he’d been feeling altogether… _lighter_ for the past few days, like some burden he hadn’t even been aware of carrying was suddenly – not gone, not completely, but much lessened in bulk. Which was kind of surprising, considering he’d started this leave in what Brad was choosing to conservatively categorize as A Bad Mood. He didn’t understand the change, exactly (or perhaps he was carefully not remembering possible reasons for it), but he would take it and gladly.

Of course he should have known better than to trust that the universe wouldn’t kick him in the teeth again as soon as possible, which is why he strolled into the lobby of his hotel that afternoon to find Captain Nathaniel Fick sitting there waiting for him.


	11. Chapter 11

Brad stopped dead just inside the doors, staring in shock at the last person on earth he’d have expected to see here. His skin felt hot, then cold, as an entire series of unidentifiable emotions flooded through him like a tidal wave. Nate – the captain was _here_. In _England_. Why was he _here_?

The captain rose from his seat and walked toward him, slowly, like he was unsure of his reception. His gaze was fastened on Brad just as Brad’s was on him, and as he came closer Brad saw that Nate had the strangest expression on his face, one Brad had never seen before. He couldn’t figure out what it was, because the only term that was coming to him to describe it was _awe_ , and that obviously couldn’t be right.

Nate stopped five feet away and, oddly, cleared his throat twice before greeting him. “Sergeant.”

“Sir,” Brad answered automatically, and knew he sounded just as confused as he felt.

“You’re – ” Nate stopped, then went on, “You’re looking well.”

Brad had the odd feeling that that wasn’t what the captain had started out to say. He opened his mouth to give the standard platitude that Nate looked the same, and snapped it shut as he abruptly realized that it would be a total lie.

Because Nate looked like _shit_ , like he’d come straight from their tour in the desert, when Brad knew he’d been safely ensconced in Ivy League utopia for over a year now. He obviously hadn’t shaved in days, and his eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, hollow in their sockets, as if he hadn’t slept in those days either. Brad glanced at the captain’s hands and noted a minute trembling of his fingers. What the hell had happened to him?

“Sir,” Brad said, unable to help himself, “are you all right?”

“Hmm?” Nate said, absently. He appeared to be staring at Brad’s neck, or maybe his chest, or maybe he wasn’t actually looking at anything. Brad’s concern level kicked up a few more notches.

“I said, are you all right, sir?” he repeated, ducking his head in an effort to catch Nate’s eye.

Nate blinked, a little too slowly, and focused on Brad’s face again. “Oh. No, I’m – I’ve just had a… an interesting time, recently,” he said. He smiled, a little. “That’s a Chinese curse, you know. ‘May you live in interesting times.’ The Chinese knew their curses.”

Well, that wasn’t alarming at _all_. “I’ve heard of that one,” Brad said, slowly. “Does this ‘interesting time’ you’re having have something to do with why you’re in London instead of – ”

He cut himself off as he suddenly remembered something. _617 area code_. Wasn’t that - 

“Captain,” he blurted, “were you trying to call me, two days ago?”

Nate’s shoulders hunched, like he’d been caught at something. “Yeah. Sorry, I should have left a message, but I…”

He trailed off, and Brad decided that he didn’t know what the fuck was going on here, but that a hotel lobby was not the place to discuss it.

“How about we go somewhere and talk, sir?” He was less than enthusiastic about reopening old wounds (or, more accurately, poking at never-healed ones), which spending any amount of time in Nate Fick’s company was guaranteed to do, but there was no way he would leave _any_ of his brothers alone in such a state, much less Nate, so Brad would just have to suck it up and make do, like always.

He would have to be careful, though. It’d been quite a while since Brad had needed to wear this particular mask.

Nate was nodding. “You have a room here, right? We can use that.”

Brad’s throat closed up momentarily with all the incredibly inappropriate places his brain wanted to take those words coming out of Nate Fick’s mouth, so there was a discernible pause before he managed to reply calmly, “Absolutely, sir. Elevators are this way.”

He gestured, and Nate gave him another odd, not-quite-identifiable look before moving back to pick up his bag from the floor, and heading in the direction Brad had pointed. The look made him uneasy. Had Nate clocked that pause, and was he now wondering what it might have meant?

Fuck. Two minutes into this, and he was already fucking it up. He would have to try harder.

 

* * *

 

Nate seemed impressed by the room, which admittedly was a cut above the average; Brad wasn’t above spending a little extra for creature comforts when he had the opportunity, even at London’s batshit crazy prices.

“Wow, this is a lot nicer than – ” Nate stopped.

“Nicer than what?” Brad asked.

“– than the last hotel room I was in,” Nate finished after a moment, and plunked his bag down on the desk in the corner of the room; Brad raised an eyebrow at the distinct _clunk_ of something made of heavy glass inside.

“Transporting contraband, sir?” he asked.

Nate turned. “Huh?”

Brad nodded at the bag. “Liquor of some kind, I presume.”

Nate snorted, and shook his head, amused. “It’s like you’re trained in reconnaissance or something,” he murmured.

Brad gave him a toothy grin in answer – and Nate gave an odd little start of surprise, staring at Brad’s mouth.

Brad blinked, letting his smile drop in confusion, but Nate only shook himself and turned away, moving to open the bag. Brad retrieved the tumblers from their little silver tray on the side table, trying to figure out why he suddenly felt… prickled, like thousands of tiny sharp points were dancing almost imperceptibly across his skin. He was imagining things, he told himself.

Then Nate pulled out a bottle of whiskey from the bag, and set it down on the desk so that the label was visible. Brad blinked, drifting to a halt in the middle of the room.

“That’s…” he said.

“Johnnie Walker Blue,” Nate said, watching him.

Brad’s father had given him a glass of Johnnie Walker Blue the day he’d enlisted, for all Brad had only been seventeen at the time. He’d said, sadly and proudly at the same time, _if you can die for your country now, Brad, then you can also have yourself a decent drink_. It had made an impression.

Since then he had only bought that particular whiskey himself twice more: the day Jessica had returned his ring, and the day after 9/11, when he’d realized he was now part of a military no longer at peace, but at war.

It meant change to Brad, that label, change profound enough to be worth commemorating with absurdly expensive alcohol. What were the odds that Nate would have chosen that particular brand?

“That’s some fairly serious liquor, sir. What’s the occasion?” he asked calmly, moving to the desk to set the glasses down. Coincidences were nothing to get worked up about, he told himself.

Nate’s mouth twisted for a moment, then he shrugged. “Maybe I just have champagne tastes.”

“You should probably have gotten champagne, then, don’t you think?”

“Champagne is for celebrations,” Nate replied, seriously. “This is something different.”

Rather than ask what that meant, Brad merely raised an eyebrow at Nate, indicating the bottle. Nate nodded him the go-ahead to open the whiskey and pour, and Brad held up his own glass after handing Nate his.

“Shall we toast to something?” he asked.

Nate opened his mouth and shut it. Finally, he nodded. “Yes,” he said. Brad waited.

Nate took a breath, and then held up his glass and said, “May God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Brad stared at him, feeling caught somewhere between bewildered and unnerved. Nate didn’t look at him, instead tossing his drink down in one gulp and pouring himself more.

Cautiously, Brad remarked, “I didn’t think you put much stock in religion.”

“I don’t,” Nate said, and laughed. It was a weird laugh, like Nate was mocking himself.

“Sir,” Brad said, “I feel it is my duty to inform you that you are officially freaking me out right now.”

“Yeah, well, I guess it’s your turn for that,” Nate said.

“…To be freaked out?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” Brad said, though he really, really didn’t. “So you have been… freaked out, recently, then?”

“Very,” Nate said, sourly.

“Okay,” Brad said, feeling oddly like he was picking his way through potentially hostile terrain. “Are you going to tell me about it, sir?”

“I – ” Nate stopped and abruptly turned away from Brad, heading to the two winged armchairs arranged cattycorner in an alcove next to the window, a small low table between them. He sank into the right-hand chair and leaned forward, forearms on his thighs, hands clasping the whiskey tumbler between them. Brad followed suit, taking the other chair, though he leaned back, watching Nate carefully. For his part, Nate appeared to be finding the carpet utterly fascinating.

Brad decided to wait him out, and sure enough, after only a minute or so of silence Nate said, quietly, “I fought with myself about coming here. I didn’t know if I had any right. I still don’t. I could be – I could be doing very much the wrong thing here. I don’t even know if – ” he stopped again.

Brad said, just as quietly, “Whatever it is, sir, we’ll work it out. I’ve got your six.”

Nate looked up, and stared at Brad’s face, and his own features twisted in something like pain even as he smiled. “Yeah, Brad, I know. You always have. You always…”

He trailed off, and somewhere in the back of his brain Brad felt an alarm bell go off. That look had been… knowing. And… it had not been a happy look. _Oh, fuck._

Nate swallowed hard, and then said, “I have to know something, first. I have no right to ask, but if I’m mistaken, or…”

It wasn’t just one alarm bell now, it was a whole cacophony of them, and Brad felt himself go still, as if poised for flight. Or fight. _No, Nate_ , he begged silently, _no, no, no, don’t ask, you_ can’t _ask, please…_

“I’m only going to ask,” Nate said, “if you – if you have anything to tell me. That’s all.” He bowed his head, concentrating on his glass, and didn’t look at Brad, just waited.

Brad battled a nearly overwhelming urge to jump up and flee the room, not least because such a dumbass move would be a confession in and of itself. Not that it mattered, because Nate _knew_. He had to know, or at least strongly suspect. That was the only thing that made sense, the only thing that he could possibly be referring to with those words.

But why was he bringing it up _now_? Why now, when Brad was an ocean and two years away from Nate, and had never planned on even seeing Nate again, except maybe at the odd reunion barbeque? Had the suspicion upset him so badly that he’d felt the need to fly all the way to fucking _England_ to confront Brad about it? Was _that_ why he was looking like he’d gone six rounds with the devil himself? Had Nate really found the idea so loathsome that –

 _But of course he did_ , Brad thought, heart aching. Nate was a Marine, and straight, and Brad had had no right to feel the way he had – did – and Nate had every right to be upset about it.

But… there was something off, here. It just wasn’t like Nate to be _cruel_ about it, to come here and – do whatever he was planning to do if Brad admitted to how he felt. It was too petty; it didn’t match with the man Brad ( _loved_ ) remembered at all.

Not to mention, if Nate had felt so strongly about Brad’s inappropriate feelings that he’d come all the way to London to throw them in Brad’s face, then why was he also giving Brad an out?

Because he was; he’d phrased his question so that he’d directly accused Brad of nothing at all. All Brad had to do was answer _No, sir, I have nothing to tell you_ , and, he sensed, that would be the end of it. All plausible deniability, all squared away.

Which was absolutely what Brad should do. It was too risky to say anything else. Just say the words, he told himself, and move on. _No, sir, I have nothing to tell you_. No one can prove anything, including Nate. Just say it, just lie like you’ve always done, and put this whole thing in the past where it belongs.

_Just lie._

The words set off something very like a miniature flash-bang in his head, and suddenly he was back in that pub three nights ago, with smooth, strong hands cupping his face and eyes of every hue holding his own, and a warm, kind, relentless, indelible voice.

 _When an opportunity for honesty arises, Brad, do not spurn it_.

Brad barely restrained a gasp as he came abruptly back to the present, with Nate’s bowed head before him and the words still reverberating in his brain.

_Do not spurn it._

_But surely you couldn’t have meant_ this _!_ Brad shouted back in his mind, and of course there was no answer, because it was just a fucking memory, and an alcohol-addled one at that, and probably had never even fucking happened in the first place. And even if it had, was Brad actually contemplating possibly ruining his career and losing the respect of one of the best men he’d ever ( _loved_ ) known because some random weirdo in a bar told him to?

 _Do not spurn it._ The words burned in his mind, inescapable.

“Fuck,” he hissed aloud, and jumped to his feet. They wanted honesty from him, did they, the weirdo and Nate? Well, he would fucking give it to them then.

Nate’s head jerked up in response to his move, startled. “Fine,” Brad snapped, and knew he had an ugly snarl on his face even as he straightened to an attention no DI in the world could fault. “Captain Fick, sir!” he bellowed, and from the corner of his eye saw Nate’s eyes go wide. “I regret to inform you that this Marine is a cocksucker, sir! This Marine is gay, queer, a fairy, a fucking faggot, sir, and this Marine spent most of our tour in Iraq fantasizing about sucking your cock specifically, sir!”

He looked at Nate, and saw that his face was white as a sheet, his body rigid, and this only served to make Brad angrier. _Maybe next time you’ll be more careful of what you ask for, right, Captain?_ he thought, savagely. He stayed at attention, but now he looked directly at Nate, glared at him. Let him see everything.

“Sir! This Marine has harbored entirely inappropriate feelings for his commanding officer, namely you, sir, since the day this Marine met you at Camp Pendleton, sir! This Marine – ” and here his voice broke entirely without his consent, and he looked away from Nate, back at the wall, and forced out the rest, “ – this Marine has been in love with his former CO for years, sir, and fuck you for asking, because this Marine is telling, and may you choke on it. Sir.”

By the end, his voice had wound down from the parade ground bellow he’d begun with to a hoarse, cracked whisper, but he never once relaxed his ramrod straight pose of attention. He would do that fucking much at least, by God.

There was a ringing silence once he’d finished. Brad kept his gaze firmly on the opposite wall, because fuck however Nate was reacting. It was done, it was out there, the worst had come to pass, and Brad would deal with the consequences like a Marine, whatever they were. There was nothing Nate could say that would shake Brad now.

And then Nate said, quietly, “The first guy you ever kissed was named Martin Taylor.”

Brad whipped around to stare at Nate. _What the fuck –_

“It was at military school. You were fifteen and he was sixteen, and you were in the woods doing PT. Nothing else happened, and the two of you never did it again, but that’s when you first knew for sure that you liked guys even more than you liked girls.” Nate’s voice was calm and his gaze steady, and it had nothing of condemnation or anger in it at all.

“How the fuck do you know about that?” Brad demanded, and heard his voice shake. _Nobody_ knew about that.

“You told me about it,” Nate said. “About three months from now.”

Brad just stared, because that made even less sense than Nate knowing about Martin. And why wasn’t Nate angry about – he didn’t even look _surprised_.

“Sit down, Brad,” Nate said, gently, and Brad obeyed without thinking about it. He felt stunned, like someone had hit him over the head. All his anger had drained out of him, like water, but the adrenaline was still hanging around sourly in his blood, making him feel shocky and disoriented.

Nate leaned over to pick up Brad’s tumbler from the floor – Brad didn’t even remember when he’d dropped it – and then rose to retrieve the whiskey bottle from the desk, bringing it back over to the small table between the chairs. He refilled both their glasses and pressed Brad’s into his fingers firmly before sitting back down. Brad stared at it, and after a moment remembered he was supposed to drink it, and did so.

“Three nights ago,” Nate said, “you were very angry about something. You never did tell me what it was, but it was bad enough that you drank a metric shit-ton of whiskey to try and forget about it.”

“Lance Corporal Davies,” Brad answered, to his own surprise. “He – he announced to us that he’d just gotten engaged. To his boyfriend Ian.” He laughed, bitterly. “No DADT for the limeys.”

Davies had just fucking _said_ it. In front of his entire unit, like it was no big deal. And it _hadn’t_ been. The others had made all the obligatory fag jokes, but their words had held no more sting than any of the other kinds of shit the men gave each other constantly. Davies had cheerfully given back as good as he got, and then they’d congratulated him with what appeared to be total sincerity, and made plans to get him drunk, and that had been the end of it.

And Davies had given Brad this _look_ , like he was daring Brad to say something, to be the backwards whiskey tango homophobic Yank they all assumed he was, even as they respected him for his battle prowess. If only they knew. Brad had called upon every last scrap of his Iceman persona in order to calmly wish Davies all the best on his upcoming nuptials, and then force himself to hang around long enough to make it clear he had no problem, before getting the hell out of Dodge (or Dorset, as the case may be) on his scheduled leave, headed for London and the first bottle of alcohol he could get his hands on, before the irony of it all choked him to death.

“Ah,” Nate said, nodding, like he understood all of that without Brad having to say it. Like there wasn’t anything shocking to him about Brad liking cock, or that Brad was in love with him. Like there wasn’t anything strange about Nate knowing things about Brad’s life that there was no way in hell he should know.

Brad wondered if maybe he’d fallen down a rabbit hole without noticing. He was in the right country for that Wonderland shit, after all.

“Sir,” Brad said, “I feel I should tell you that I am really, really fucking confused right about now.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Nate said, wryly. He took a deep breath, and said, “I don’t know what happened to you after you got drunk on that night, because whatever _did_ happen wasn’t what happened the first time.”

“The first time what?” Brad asked.

“The first time that night happened,” Nate told him.

Brad blinked at him a moment, and said, “You did hear what just came out of your mouth, right?”

Nate huffed a small chuckle. “Yes,” he said. Then he turned serious again. “I have a story to tell you which will explain all this, but you – I don’t know that you are going to want to hear it, or thank me for telling it. Or even believe that it’s true. And even if you do believe it, I don’t – ” he stopped a moment, and when he resumed his voice was hoarse, “ – I don’t know what the consequences will be. I’m – I’m leaping off a cliff here, and if I turn out to be wrong…” He trailed off, seeming to be battling with something in his mind.

Brad kept still and waited, and at length Nate seemed to come to some decision, and nodded to himself. “But regardless, I think you deserve to know it, if you want. You should – you should have the choice, to know.”

He cleared his throat, and looked Brad in the eye. “But if you don’t want to hear this story, Brad, all you have to do is tell me. I’ll leave right now and never bother you again, if that’s what you want. It’s up to you. This is your choice.”

There was a long silence, then. Brad was torn; on the one hand, he was almost desperate to understand what the hell was going on here. But on the other… if Nate said that this was something Brad probably didn’t want to know, then it probably really, really wasn’t.

Brad stared into Nate’s eyes, which were just as he’d remembered them: beautiful and open and honest, and shadowed with the pain that comes with being a good man in an ugly world. The eyes which said that now, as then, as always, Nate was still trying to do the right thing, regardless of the cost to himself. To protect his men, even if it meant shouldering the burden alone.

In light of that, there was really only one thing he could say.

“Then I guess it’s story time, isn’t it, sir?”


	12. Chapter 12

Nate talked for almost three hours.

Brad barely moved the entire time, probably, Nate suspected, as penance for all the wild (by Brad’s standards) emoting he’d been doing previously. So Brad sat listening with Iceman-worthy stoicism to Nate’s recount of a story which, even to Nate’s own ears, sounded not just ludicrous but outright insane. The only signs of any reaction on Brad’s part were an occasional slight widening of his eyes, a few minute shifts in his chair, and once (during one of the Ray parts of the story) a small, amused snort.

Nate told him everything, everything he could remember. Everything he’d been cursed to be unable to forget.

Not just about the night they “met” and what had happened there, but how Ray and his girlfriend Sarah (to whom Ray had spilled the beans immediately, to Brad’s horror, and who turned out to be the most practical and trustworthy of them all, and was far more awesome a partner than Ray probably deserved) had schemed with Brad to arrange it, Sarah even taking Brad shopping for the perfect “seduction” outfit. Everything Brad had told him about his meeting with the man and its aftermath. The letter. The day after, and their fight in the diner, and what had followed that. Their apartment hunt. Ray’s rather hilarious ventures into the seedy world of false identities, and the entire night’s worth of drinking and arguing and searching of online baby name dictionaries it had taken the three of them to choose Brad’s new name (let’s just say, flowcharts had been involved). Brad’s job at the dojo, and how Brad had gotten it by wiping the floor with the (male) lead instructor in under a minute.

He told him about nights of beer and chess matches and bad television, about Brad proofreading Nate’s papers and arguing with him for hours about foreign policy and COIN. He told him about their trip to Montauk, where Brad had attempted to teach Nate to surf, and how much shit Brad had given him for being (in Brad’s estimation) the most inept surfer ever. He told him about the time Brad had been randomly approached in a restaurant with a modeling contract offer, by a guy who turned out to genuinely be a photographer for Vogue. (Brad had turned him down flat. Nate was still a tiny bit upset about that.)

Nate told him about their days and nights of fruitless research, of countless dead ends and false trails. He told him about the Article 85 indictment, and how Ray had alienated most of their former company by refusing to acknowledge anything about Brad being missing. He told him about the horrible, guilt-ridden day Brad’s mother had called Nate, out of the blue, to ask him (as she was asking everyone Brad had ever served with, desperately) if he knew anything about her son’s disappearance.

He told him about the days where Brad had refused to speak to anyone, days where he’d refused to get out of bed, about the funks and depressions Brad had battled over the loss of his former life and the difficulty of adjusting to his new one. He told him about the epic shitfit Brad had pitched the first time he’d had to endure a menstrual period, and the ensuing, equally epic fight they’d had over whether he should see a gynecologist. (Thankfully, Sarah, who was an RN, had stepped in on that one, over the phone. Nate never found out what she said to convince him, but the next day a tight-lipped Brad had made the appointment and gone, without another word about it.) Nate told him about all the times they had fought, which were frequent, and all the times they hadn’t, which were even more frequent.

And he told Brad, as frankly as he could bear to, about the (amazing, wonderful) sex, which had probably been the most frequent of all. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look directly at Brad when he talked about that, so all he could tell from the corner of his eye was that Brad remained as still then as he did during all the other parts of the story. Nate wished he knew what that meant, but for now there was nothing to do but go on.

He talked and talked, telling Brad everything.

And all the while, as he had been since the moment Brad had walked through the hotel lobby doors, Nate kept being startled anew every time he looked at Brad. At every time he saw the sheer _maleness_ of him. Which was a stupid way to put it, perhaps, but Nate couldn’t think of any other way to express it. After so long with Bri – with Brad’s female form, her curves and subtle strength and smoothness, the contrast was a constant shock, if that wasn’t a contradiction in terms.

But every time he was jolted afresh by some aspect of Brad restored – the larger frame, the squared jaw, the five o’clock shadow, the buzzed hair, the thick, broad shoulders, the overtly muscled arms, the flat, hard chest – Nate became more and more glad that the change had been undone, even as his heart clenched with loss.

Brad as a woman had been strong and graceful and beautiful, stunningly so. But Brad as a man was just… _right_ , in a way that the female version of him never had been. Even just sitting there across from him, Nate could see that Brad _fit_ with himself, inhabited his own skin with an unconscious ease that Nate had never fully realized was missing from his female form, before.

Brad had known it then, had tried to explain it to him, but it was only now that Nate finally saw it for himself. _No more funhouse mirror_ , Nate thought. He would be lying if he said it was a wholly happy thought, but it was more happy than it was anything else. This was Brad as he should be, and that in itself made it all worth it.

And as for what that meant for him… well, they’d get to that part. First he had to see whether Brad was going to be able to buy a single word Nate had said.

Finally, he got to the night of Walt’s visit, and the news he’d brought. By now Nate had been talking for hours, and his voice was taking on a distinct sandpapery quality. When he stopped to clear his throat three times in one sentence, Brad abruptly stood and went to the little minifridge, where he pulled out a bottle of water that would likely add about twenty dollars to his hotel tab, and tossed it to Nate before sitting back down.

“Thanks,” Nate rasped, and downed about half the bottle in one go. His throat felt much better for it, but now that the flow of words had been broken, Nate was reluctant to begin again. Especially since this part was going to be the hardest to tell. He bought some time by pressing the cold plastic against his temple, closing his eyes and trying to marshal his thoughts.

“It was for my funeral, wasn’t it,” Brad said, suddenly. After being silent for so long, it was a shock to hear his voice again, deeper and rougher and yet so much like the voice Nate had ( _loved_ ) known. “That’s the news Walt was bringing.”

Nate gave him a surprised look, and Brad raised an eyebrow. “Six months, right? Sounds about standard.” If he felt anything else about it, or that he believed a word Nate was saying, he didn’t show it.

“Yeah,” Nate admitted. “You… didn’t take the news well. But then, who would?”

“Did you go?”

“Did we – oh. No. Never got the chance.”

“Pity,” Brad remarked. “I read somewhere that one should always attend one’s own funeral if you have the opportunity.”

The words were flippant, but something in Brad’s eyes belied his mocking tone. Nate carefully smothered the small spark of hope this engendered in him, and went on.

“After Walt left,” Nate said, “you told me that you were calling it, too. You said that it was time to acknowledge that your… state was permanent, and nothing was going to change it. I argued against it, but… the truth was, I thought you were right. You said – you said that you were never going to feel right this way, but if you – if you had to be this way, at least we were together.” He didn’t look at Brad. “And that’s when I told you that I loved you.”

He shook his head, not daring to glance Brad’s way. “I should have said it months before. It was _true_ months before. I just didn’t – I was a coward. I didn’t know what would happen, if I said it and then we found a way to reverse the curse… I should have had more faith.”

He swallowed. “And you said that you loved me too, that you had loved me since we’d met, but… and you didn’t want to finish that, but I asked, and you said that you would always know that I only loved _that_ you, that I loved Brad-as-a-woman, and that I would never love you for who you really were.”

Nate’s voice cracked. He stopped, and there was silence for a while. He still couldn’t bring himself to look at Brad, and Brad said nothing. Eventually he went on.

“That night,” he said, “the man came back. And this time he came for me.”

Brad remained silent, but Nate glanced out of the corner of his eye, and saw that Brad’s hand was curled around the arm of the chair, and his knuckles were paler than the rest of his fingers. The spark of hope was bigger this time, harder to stifle, but Nate squashed it ruthlessly, and kept going.

“It turned out my fears were ironic in the extreme, because he told me – he said that me saying I loved you was what finally fulfilled the contract, and now he’d come to change you back. That was the trick, you see. As soon as you got what you’d wanted, he intended for you to lose it, and lose everything else at the same time: your career, your… everything. It was a trap – what you get is never worth the price you pay for it.

“Then he offered me a deal in its stead.” Nate decided that he could skim over some of this; it was the end result that was important, after all. “I figured, though, that any deal he offered was bound to be just as much a trick as yours had been, and so I… I took a risk, and offered a deal of my own. I thought, if there was a way I could make it so the whole thing had never happened, then you could – then we could go on, and be – where we were. And it worked, mostly. And – and here we are.

“I thought it would be okay because neither of us would remember; it would be like it never happened. But he tricked me after all, because I – I was suddenly sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture that I realized I’d already heard months before, and then I realized I remembered everything.”

He turned and looked at Brad. “I remember nearly every minute of a six months that never happened. That was _my_ price; everyone else forgot, even you, but I had to remember. I’ll always remember having lived that time. I’ll always remember what – what I lost.” His voice had gone hoarse again, and he cleared his throat.

“But I don’t regret it. Seeing you here – it was the right thing to do. As agreed, this is a price that only affects me, and I am more than happy to – it could have been a lot worse, so. And… and that’s it. That’s the story.”

A lame finish indeed, but Nate was exhausted, and he really wanted to stop talking now. He waited for Brad’s reaction. He had absolutely no idea what it would be; he could picture anything from flat disbelief to rage to calling for a straitjacket to –

“What was the original deal?” Brad asked.

Nate blinked. That was… not what he had expected. “Huh?”

“The original deal he offered you, the one you rejected,” Brad said. “What was it?”

Nate stared at Brad. Brad looked back at him with a calm Nate found frankly astounding. “So you… believe me?” he blurted.

Brad’s eyebrows quirked in a way that conveyed disapproval that Nate would even ask such a thing. “Yes,” he replied, simply. Like it really was that easy, that straightforward. Nate came here and spewed this massive pile of crazy at him, and Brad just… accepted it.

But, Nate remembered, that was precisely the thing about Brad that had always both inspired and terrified Nate: that unnerving trust in him that Brad had always had, like there was never even the possibility that Nate would lie to him. Fuck up, maybe, yes, but lie, no. Nate thought of how close he’d come to betraying that trust, and had to shut his eyes a moment against the wave of guilt that momentarily swamped him.

When he opened them again, Brad was watching him carefully. He said, as if offering something, “Perhaps I shouldn’t believe you, sir, but there have been – ” he hesitated. “There are events which have occurred in the last few days that make me… more inclined to believe unbelievable things than I might have otherwise.”

Nate frowned. “Events? What events?” There weren’t supposed to have been _events_. That’s what his deal had been for.

Brad shook his head. “Not yet, sir. You’re avoiding my question.”

Nate considered pushing it, but it was a fair shot. Nate glanced away from Brad. “It was just… a rotten deal,” he said, trying to make it sound dismissive. “Not acceptable.”

“Nate,” Brad said, and Nate sighed, because Brad wasn’t going to let this go, clearly.

“He offered to let me keep you as Brianna, permanently,” Nate answered, reluctantly. He added, even more reluctantly, “He even offered to make you forget you’d ever been Brad in the first place.”

Brad sat back, studying him intently. “And you refused.”

“Yes.” He became lost, temporarily, in the memory of that moment, upon which had hinged… everything.

“Hmm,” Brad said, not skeptically but thoughtfully, as if he was incorporating that information into… whatever he was thinking about this whole thing. He tilted his head, eyes locked on Nate. “If I hadn’t told, before, when you asked,” Brad said, “what would you have done?”

Nate blinked, pulling back from his distraction and trying to focus on Brad’s words. “Sorry?”

“If I had lied to you,” Brad rephrased, intently, “if I had said I felt nothing for you, that I only slept with women, whatever. Would you still have told me your story?”

Nate shook his head. “No,” he admitted. He would have left, he knew, unwilling to venture where he had been specifically forbidden to tread, no matter how much he might have wanted to do otherwise. He wondered how to explain that, but Brad didn’t seem to need an explanation, only nodded as if that cleared up something for him.

His gaze was still on Nate’s, piercing. “Three nights ago,” Brad said, “I got piss-drunk on whiskey and went to a bar to find someone to fuck. I met a man there, and he wasn’t – I don’t think he was really a man at all.”

Nate felt his eyes widen in fury, because that _lying sack of shit_. “That fucker,” he hissed. “He fucking _promised_ me – ”

But Brad was shaking his head. “It wasn’t him. It wasn’t – the man,” he said, stumbling a little over the term. “He didn’t look like you, like you said. He looked like… I don’t know, like everyone. But he wasn’t just some random guy, either. He knew things about me. Things that – are not important anymore, but he shouldn’t have known them. He said… he said he was my friend. And I think – I think maybe he was.”

He stared at Nate meaningfully, and Nate’s eyes widened this time for a completely different reason. Was Brad really suggesting what he thought he –

“I don’t remember everything he said to me,” Brad said, “but I do remember he told me that if an opportunity to tell the truth came up, he advised me very emphatically not to ignore it. And if he hadn’t said that, sir,” Brad added, “I can tell you that the last three hours would have gone very differently.”

Nate blinked rapidly, his thoughts tumbling around like clothes in a dryer as he tried to process this. He wasn’t having a whole lot of luck thus far.

“There’s another thing he said,” Brad continued, “that I remember word for word. He said _Popular opinion to the contrary, certain kinds of sacrifices demand compensation, and certain kinds of wrongs demand to be righted_.” Brad paused, searching Nate’s face, for a reaction perhaps, but if Nate’s face felt as frozen as the rest of him, he wasn’t going to get much out of that.

“Sacrifices,” Brad said, thoughtfully, gazing at him. “You said that you asked that the price you paid only affect you, but you also indicated that you didn’t know beforehand that _remembering_ was the price you would pay. Exactly what other parameters _did_ you put on that price, sir?”

“I – didn’t,” Nate faltered, embarrassed. “But I had to do it that way,” he added, before Brad could berate him for being stupid. “It couldn’t be anything _I_ wanted. There couldn’t be – cheating. That’s the only way I could figure it wouldn’t backfire on you. Or me, hopefully.”

“Hmm,” Brad said again, continuing to study Nate. Nate tried, and failed, not to flush under the scrutiny.

“Why did you come here, Nate?” Brad asked. His voice and eyes, as before, were Iceman calm. But Nate knew Brad far too well by now, even if not in this body, and he heard the underlying tension, coiled like a spring below the smooth surface, threatening to shatter it.

Nate swallowed. There it was, the cliff ahead, where everything could go straight to shit for them both. He still didn’t know whether he intended to jump. “I wanted to make sure it worked. That you were okay,” he stalled, pathetically.

Brad raised an eyebrow. “You already had confirmation of that from when you had Ray get you my address in London. The fact that he talked to me at all was proof enough. So, no. Why did you come here?”

Who was he kidding. He was going to jump, he always had been. If he hadn’t been going to jump he would never have gotten on the damn plane in the first place. Nate took a deep breath, and plunged.

“I came here because I love you,” he said. “Still. I – I still love you.”


	13. Chapter 13

Brad froze into absolute stillness. He forgot to breathe. Of all the things he’d have thought Nate might say to him, even after all the impossibilities Nate had already unloaded on him…

Brad couldn’t allow himself to examine his reaction to this. Not yet.

Across from him, Nate clenched his fists and took another, shaky breath, looking alarmingly like Brad’s sister did when she had one of her infrequent panic attacks.

“The man – he said, to me,” Nate rushed on, stumbling over his words, “that I would never find anything again like you, and he was right, but he meant you as Bri – as a woman. And you, you said to me that I loved you, but you said it was only because you were a woman, that I couldn’t love you as – as you. And we all – him, you, me – we all assumed that that was true, because I – ” he gestured helplessly. “I’m straight. I’m _straight_ , Brad. I’ve always been – with women, my whole life. It never even occurred to me, before now, to consider – anything different.”

Nate stopped, took another breath. Brad tamped down the twisting in his gut, because Nate wasn’t finished. He wasn’t looking at Brad now, staring at nothing instead, marshaling his words perhaps.

“After it all – reset, and Ray told me he had talked to you, and I knew you were yourself again, I was totally prepared to walk away. I was going to let it go, let _you_ go, because, I thought, what right do I have, to unload this shit on you? What purpose would it have served, except selfish ones? I asked that the price affect no one but me, and that’s exactly what I got. So how hypocritical would it have been for me to then turn right around and – and have told you all that, only to leave you in the same position I was in? To know that we’d had each other in that other life, but never could in this one?”

Nate bowed his head, face twisting in pain. Brad concentrated on breathing: in, out, in, out. Because Nate could not possibly be leading up to –

“But, it occurred to me,” Nate said, and stopped to swallow, “that you kind of already were in that position anyway. Wanting what you couldn’t – and I had too much respect for you, too much – “ He shook his head. “If it had been me, I would have wanted to know. But more than that, I – wondered if, maybe, our assumptions had been wrong.”

He raised his head and looked Brad in the eye. Brad tried not to move a single muscle.

“I can’t – Brad, I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t promise this won’t end badly. But, can I – can I try?”

He scooted forward on his chair, eyes locked on Brad’s. “Can I try,” he asked, with heartbreaking sincerity, “to see if I can be with you as – as you?”

Every fiber of Brad’s being screamed at him to say yes. To shout it from the mountaintops, even – yes, yes, _yes_. But he couldn’t, because Nate’s apprehensions were the wrong ones.

“Nate,” he said, and was distantly shocked at how raw his voice sounded, “I – you have no idea how badly I want you to – to try. But you – I don’t think you’ve considered all the angles here.”

“I _have_ – ” Nate began, and stopped at Brad’s headshake.

“You haven’t,” he said, flatly. “Of the two of us, _I_ am the one who’s been a closeted fag Marine his whole life, and I know what it means, and you don’t. You have no idea what you’re getting into here.”

Brad saw Nate’s nostrils flare angrily at the epithet, and loved him just a little bit more for it, but he pushed on, relentless. Nate had to understand.

“There’s no fairytale ending here, Nate. Even if you can – ” he swallowed “ – be with me, we can never be open about it, never be honest. I _can’t_ leave the Corps, Nate. Being a Marine, it’s who I am.”

Nate opened his mouth, clearly indignant that Brad would think he would even suggest it, and Brad raised a placating hand. He knew Nate knew that, but it had to be said.

Nate subsided, and Brad went on. “Are you prepared to sneak around, to have a – to never be able to tell? For – ” he hastily choked down _for the rest of your life_ , he was not prepared to presume that far “ – for as long as we’re together? And forget about me, are you prepared for what it will do to your _own_ career if it ever gets out? Or even if it doesn’t? Don’t tell me you don’t have that shit all planned out, Nate.”

Nate couldn’t, he knew. If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that Nate had his career path plotted out to the nth degree, and Brad was personally positive that that course would eventually lead to places even higher than Nate himself might believe possible. But none of that would come to pass as long as Nate had Brad as his dirty secret: a clandestine gay love affair with one of his former subordinates, lurking in the shadows, waiting to be exposed and destroy everything he’d worked for.

“I can’t – I can’t be what takes that away from you, Nate,” he said. “It’s better if we just – leave it.”

He tried not to feel like his entire insides were collapsing in. To have been made to realize how close he’d come to having what he’d thought he never could… he almost hated Nate a little bit for that.

_Not fair, Colbert._ But true.

He waited for Nate to acknowledge the undeniable truth of his words, wishing there was some way to speed this up so that Nate could leave already and Brad could start the long, arduous process of stitching himself back together where he’d felt like he’d been torn open. But that was okay; better that he be in pain now than to be the source of Nate’s pain later. Nate would see that, too.

“No,” Nate said, decisively, and stood up, setting his tumbler down on the table.

_No?_ What the hell did that mean? Out of instinct more than anything else, Brad copied Nate’s move, putting down his own glass and rising to his feet.

“Nate – ” he began, and Nate reached out and cupped his hand along Brad’s jaw, and Brad’s throat closed up, swallowing the rest of whatever he’d intended to say. The sensation of Nate’s skin against his own was almost like an electrical shock, sending a buzzing, heated thrum throughout his entire body.

“No,” Nate repeated softly, bright green eyes focused on him like there was nothing else in the world. “Everything you say is true, Brad, or should be. But I don’t believe that’s the way it will be.”

“What – ” Brad stopped to clear his throat, “ – what do you mean?”

Nate moved his thumb, brushing lightly at the slight stubble on Brad’s cheek as if it fascinated him. Almost absently, he replied, “DADT is on its last legs, Brad. It may not happen for a few years yet, but it _will_ be repealed. Trust me on this.”

“You can’t know – ”

“Anything about current trends in U.S. military policy?” Nate finished, raising an eyebrow. “I can, actually. It’s kind of my thing, Brad.”

Brad opened his mouth, but Nate cut him off again. “And even if I’m wrong, I don’t care. This is more important than – than any reasons against it.”

He moved his other hand to mirror the first, so that he was cupping Brad’s face now. Brad swallowed. “Nate,” he whispered. “This is crazy.”

“Define ‘crazy’, Brad,” Nate said, laughing a little. “I once walked into a hail of gunfire to direct traffic. _You_ once tried to disarm a live mortar shell in a garden with no training or protective gear. I get the feeling that ‘crazy’ is kind of _our_ thing.”

His grip on Brad’s face tightened then, tilting Brad’s chin down so Nate could look him right in the eye. “Fuck them, Brad,” he said, fiercely. “Fuck them and their definition of _sane_. And fuck anyone who tries to tell me we don’t get to have each other if we want. That is one ambush the world will _deeply_ regret trying to spring on me.”

His words rang like bells in Brad’s head, and it was like feeling a circuit close, like watching stubbornly mismatched puzzle pieces finally, at long last, align and link themselves into a smooth whole. Nate had said he was jumping off a cliff, and that’s what this felt like, exactly that inevitable. If Nate was going to jump, then there was nothing for Brad to do but follow him over.

Perhaps it would end in disaster. Nate had never been with a man, had never even thought of it. Perhaps it wasn’t possible, and Brad was about to get his heart broken worse than it ever had been.

Perhaps so. But Brad was going to do it anyway.

“You’ll have to kiss me, then, Nate,” he said, and he could probably be forgiven for how hoarse he sounded, how stupidly hopeful.

“Yes,” Nate agreed, but he didn’t move forward right away. Instead he lifted one hand from Brad’s jaw, and traced his fingers lightly over Brad’s features, over his nose and eyebrows and cheeks. He was exploring Brad’s face almost as a blind man would, except that his amazing green eyes were mapping Brad’s face just as intently. Learning his new terrain, perhaps. Brad held still, using the opportunity to drink in Nate’s face in turn, greedily indulging in his freedom to stare openly as he’d never had before.

The silence turned thick in the room, only their soft breathing disturbing the quiet. The expression in Nate’s eyes was indescribable as he widened his exploration of Brad. He moved his hands from Brad’s face to his neck, gently cupping either side, before sliding them down over Brad’s shoulders to his biceps, trailing his fingers with evident fascination over the cut of the muscle, squeezing gently at the hardness there.

It occurred to Brad that Nate had probably never touched another man like this in his entire life; it was a completely new experience for him. _In for a penny_ , he thought, and swiftly pulled his shirt off so he was bare from the waist up. He tossed the shirt on the floor, but made no other move, just waited.

Nate gave a sharp intake of breath. His hands hovered for a moment, hesitating, before coming back down lightly, this time on the bare skin of Brad’s chest. Brad tried not to betray how the touch sent a pulse of arousal through him, but Nate’s eyes flicked up to his own and crinkled slightly; he knew, and Brad wondered, if this worked, how long it would take him to catch up to how well Nate had learned him, even if in a different form, in those never-happened six months.

Well, it would be a challenge, that was all. Brad enjoyed a challenge.

Brad was distracted from his thoughts abruptly when Nate swept his hands down Brad’s chest, just missing his nipples – deliberately, Brad thought – to rest on his obliques, broad hands stretching so that his thumbs stroked over the ridge of Brad’s abdomen, almost touching. Brad had forgotten about Nate’s hands, how big and elegantly long-fingered they were, and felt his stomach muscles jump involuntarily at the contact, warm arousal coiling through him. This slow, silent exploration was becoming agonizing, but Brad wouldn’t have stopped it for anything.

Brad expected – or maybe hoped – for Nate’s next move to go lower, but instead Nate suddenly moved, walking around Brad without lifting his hands from Brad’s torso, trailing his fingers tortuously around his waist to his back. Brad felt his breath becoming a tad ragged, but he willed himself not to move. Fully behind him, Nate let out a surprised noise.

“What?” Brad said.

“Your tattoo,” Nate murmured. “I’d forgotten. Brianna didn’t – it wasn’t there.”

“He took away my ink?” Brad asked, and was surprised to hear how much anger there was in the question. The fucker. That tat was _his_ , dammit; how dare anyone take it from him?

“Too much of a giveaway, I suppose,” Nate said, but his tone was absent; he seemed much more interested in tracing the lines of Brad’s tattoo, in long sweeping lines up and down his back, and by now it was like every nerve stimulated by Nate’s feather-light touch was wired directly to his dick, Jesus. He felt like his skin was slowly being lit on fire, inch by inch.

Nate swept his palms up the length of Brad’s back to his shoulder blades, and then, mischievously perhaps, curled his fingers to scratch blunt nails up the nape of his neck, and Brad let out a small, involuntary groan that sounded impossibly loud in the quiet of the room. Shit.

Nate’s hands stilled, and Brad tried not to hold his breath, wondering if he’d scared Nate off. For a moment silence reigned in the room, and then Nate’s hands moved outward, spreading to grasp the backs of Brad’s shoulders in either hand, before Nate leaned forward to press his lips to Brad’s back, just below the nape of his neck.

This time Brad didn’t even try to hide his reaction, head tilting back, breath punched out of him in a breathy moan of desire, that one simple touch of Nate’s lips enough to nearly undo him. “Nate,” he said, not even caring how his voice shook, making the name a confession and a plea both.

“Yes,” Nate said, his voice just as unsteady, whether with answering arousal or just nerves Brad didn’t know, but he seized upon the implicit permission there anyway, unable to wait any longer, and twisted to face Nate, pulling free from Nate’s hands on his shoulders, so that he could cup Nate’s face in his own hands in turn.

Nate’s eyes were wide and naked in his face, and Brad searched them for any sign he should stop. “Can I – ” he began.

“Yes,” Nate repeated, dropping his gaze to Brad’s lips, and Brad waited no longer, but drew Nate forward to kiss him.

He longed to simply crush Nate to him and delve deep, but he forced himself to hold back, merely brushing the lightest of kisses against Nate’s lips, asking for more but not pushing. Nate had to want it too. _Oh, God, let him want it too…_

For a moment Nate didn’t respond, just letting Brad press their lips together, but when Brad moved to catch that sinful lower lip between his own, ever so slightly sucking upon it, Nate’s lips parted on an exhale, and Brad saw his eyelids drop to half-mast. It was like something clicked over in him, and Nate tilted his head and opened his mouth, and Brad felt his tongue seeking entrance, and suddenly the kiss was real.

It took only moments for the kiss to go from tentative to passionate, and Brad heard himself make a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sob of relief even as he lost himself in exploring that mouth he’d dreamed of for literally years. He still wasn’t even sure this was all really happening, but if it _was_ a dream, by God he was going to wring every last drop of happiness he could out of it while he had it.

 

* * *

 

Nate was kissing a man, kissing Brad, and he’d feared feeling nothing, or worse, feeling repulsion, but it wasn’t like that at all.

For it was _Brad_ he was kissing, not anyone else, and it was love and it was trust, and it was coming home to someone he knew so well, loved so well, and it was heat and desire, and Nate was shocked and relieved both to realize that in the end, nothing else mattered.

And it was its own thrill, as well, to move against this body, hard and blunt and coarse like his own, and to realize that no matter how hard he pushed, Brad would push back. Not that he hadn’t done just the same in female form as well, but this was… different. Nate felt the rasp of Brad’s stubble against his cheeks, moved his hands over flat pecs and shoulders even broader and harder than his own, and it was wild and dangerous, and the craziest thing he had ever done, which was saying something, and something in Nate reared up and loved it, every bruising, fierce, reckless moment of it.

He realized he was grasping Brad’s neck in a grip he would never have used on a woman, demanding and almost violent, thrusting his tongue into Brad’s mouth like he was trying to climb inside Brad’s skin, and Brad was giving it back to him blow for blow, not giving an inch. Nate’s hips were grinding against Brad’s, and it was with a rather ridiculously belated shock that Nate realized the hardness against him was Brad’s cock, frotting against him through their clothes even as Nate’s was doing the same.

_I’m going to touch that_ , Nate thought, with a nearly giddy sense of adventurous glee, and suited actions to thought, reaching a hand down and palming that rock-hard bulge in Brad’s jeans.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Brad groaned, breaking their kiss to toss his head back, and Nate lost no time in latching on to Brad’s neck with his teeth, sucking a hickey on the corded tendon on the side of his throat as he pressed and massaged Brad’s dick through his jeans. He figured, if he would have liked it so would Brad, and judging from the obscene noises Brad was making, Nate was figuring just fine on that score.

But it wasn’t enough; if Nate was doing this he was doing it properly. He broke off from Brad’s neck to look down and fumble at Brad’s fly, and didn’t miss the small start of surprise from Brad when he did.

“Nate,” Brad said, voice scratchy with lust, “you don’t have to – ”

“I know,” Nate answered. He paused a moment to look back up at Brad’s eyes. “I want to.”

Brad licked his lips, pupils blown wide and dark, and Nate grinned and pulled Brad’s fly open. He looked down again, not wanting to miss seeing himself touch a cock not his own for the first time in his life. It was odd, but Nate felt almost reverent about it as he reached into Brad’s boxers and drew him free, listening to Brad’s gasp at the touch.

Curiously, he ran his fingers over the silky-hard length of Brad’s cock, noting how it was different from his own, yet the same. He didn’t know that the sight of it itself was arousing to him, but the evidence it represented of _Brad’s_ arousal was positively intoxicating.

He suddenly wondered what it would be like to put it in his mouth, to give a blowjob rather than receive one, but he didn’t think he was ready for that yet, so instead he closed his hand around the shaft of Brad’s dick and stroked firmly, once. Brad grunted as if he’d been punched. The angle was odd, so Nate stopped and adjusted his grip before trying again. Ah, much better.

“Nate, shit, God,” Brad moaned, in that barely-coherent way he always got when turned on, and the conjunction of something so familiar with something so unprecedented was going to melt Nate’s brain if he let it, so instead he concentrated on jacking Brad’s cock as well as he could, forehead pressed into Brad’s shoulder so he could watch. He wanted Brad to come; he wanted to _see_ Brad come. He wanted to see how he felt when he watched it happen.

It didn’t take long. Brad’s whole torso bowed forward as he shook and came, and it was messy and kind of gross and also completely amazing for the look on Brad’s face alone.

“Wow,” he heard himself say softly, and before he could feel embarrassed at such a juvenile thing coming out of his mouth Brad grasped the back of Nate’s head and dragged his lips to his own, in a messy, half-articulated kiss that was even hotter for the amount of emotion he knew Brad was trying to convey with it.

Nate kissed back, all familiar push and pull except with added stubble, and felt Brad fumble at Nate’s jeans in turn, his usual grace gone, as it only ever was when Brad was desperate to show Nate how she – how _he_ felt. It had never failed to arouse Nate helplessly, that he could make Brad lose control like that, and he found with a kind of dizzy exultation that that was no less true now than it had been before. _Oh, thank God_ , he thought, _thank you, this is going to work, I can have this, Jesus Christ I can’t even –_

“Nate,” Brad broke the kiss to whisper, “Can I – please let me – ”

“Yeah, yes, please,” Nate breathed, not even caring what Brad wanted, only knowing that he could have it, whatever it was.

Without further ado, Brad dropped to his knees, so swiftly Nate almost winced in sympathy at the impact with the carpet, and set about freeing Nate’s cock from his pants and underwear with single-minded determination.

He was surprised at the look of almost overwhelming relief on Brad’s face when he saw Nate’s cock, bobbing and rock-hard, but on reflection Nate realized that Brad would have had even more cause to worry that this would end in disaster than Nate had. He also remembered, with a kind of shock, that for Brad this was their first time.

But definitely not the first time Brad had had a cock in his mouth, that was for sure. Nate knew how good Brad was at giving head as a woman, but Nate was rather startled to discover that he was _exponentially_ better at it as a man.

_Maybe something with jaw width_ , he thought nonsensically, but the far greater part of his attention was focused on not coming immediately as Brad suckled and licked and swallowed him down whole. Nate was forced to grab Brad’s shoulders just to keep his knees from buckling, and he was dimly aware that he was babbling profanity-laced nonsense as Brad went about sucking his brains out through his dick. All told, Nate was extremely impressed that he lasted almost five minutes before letting out a gut-punched moan and coming down Brad’s throat.

Brad swallowed it all down, like he always did, and pulled off to rest his head on Nate’s thigh, panting like he’d run six miles in desert heat. Brad prided himself on how good he was at that, Nate knew, on how good he could make Nate feel with it, and he had reason to be proud.

At the thought, he couldn’t resist lifting a hand to Brad’s cheek, stroking his thumb affectionately along his jaw. Brad looked up at him with the move, and whatever he saw in Nate’s face made him look positively dazed in response. Nate didn’t like not being on the same level as Brad, suddenly, so he dropped down too, maneuvering around his half-off pants to kneel in front of Brad without taking his hand away from Brad’s face. That way he could look straight into Brad’s eyes when he said again:

“I love you. Will you stay with me?”

Brad looked at him for a long moment with a wondering expression on his face, like he couldn’t believe Nate was even real, and then leaned forward to kiss Nate once, hard.

“They’ll have to kill me to keep me away, sir,” he said, voice scratchy and hoarse with emotion, and Nate had to fight down an urge to fucking cry like a baby. Instead, he laughed, shaky and maybe a little bit hysterical.

“Then this is the beginning,” he said, and he wasn’t sure why he said that, but it felt right to say.

Because this _was_ the beginning; of what Nate didn’t know, only that whatever it was, he and Brad were facing it together, and therefore he had no qualms about it at all.

Brad smiled – no, _beamed_ at him, beautiful and happy and his, and Nate grinned back and pulled him forward for another kiss.


	14. Epilogue

It was an outdoor café in Morocco this time, and the other was reading a volume of Shakespeare’s plays, reclining at ease in a hard metal chair that shouldn’t allow such comfort. Typical.

The man slid into the other chair at the rickety little table, deliberately jostling it so his opposite’s coffee rattled and slopped over the sides of the cup. That got no more reaction than a single raised eyebrow, disdaining such childish tactics, but the man didn’t care. He was an opportunist in the purest sense, after all; just because not every gambit played out the way you wanted was no reason not to take them anyway.

“So, you must feel you’ve been _very_ crafty,” he told the other, leaning back and sipping from his own cup, and grimacing. He’d never been a fan of coffee.

His opponent smiled, marked her place in the book and set it down carefully, before picking up her own cup and inhaling the fumes with pointed pleasure. “Crafty?” she repeated, as if considering. “No,” she decided, at length. “I think that’s more your department.”

As always, whatever skin she wore, the eyes gave her away: swirling pools of hue, ever shifting and changing. It was far from the only difference between them, her refusal to hide this one thing of who she was, but it was the most obvious. The man smirked.

“That’s more true than you might think,” he told her, smugly. “I mean, bravo on your tit for tat, and all – the whiskey _was_ rather bad form on my part, I admit – but you don’t actually think your little nudge did either of them any _favors_ , do you?”

She shrugged in what was no doubt meant to be an enigmatic – and infuriating – manner. “That probably depends on your point of view,” she said, and sipped her coffee.

The man snorted. “Oh, right. Love, that many-splendoured thing, the greatest commandment, my cup overfloweth, yadda yadda yadda. All very sweet, if absurdly naïve.” He shook his head in mock commiseration. “Well, hopefully you lot will find the beauty of young Nathaniel’s _love_ adequate compensation for everything it’s going to cost you.”

She tilted her head. “And what’s that?” she asked, curiously.

“Oh, please, don’t play stupid,” he shot back. “You know as well as I where his path was headed; that’s why I was sent in the first place. You know perfectly well what he might have done for your end, if he’d succeeded in climbing as far as his course allowed.” He grinned. “Well, fat chance of any of that happening _now_ , is there. Even if they do ever manage to repeal that delightful law, he’s done. They haven’t even managed to elect a _woman_ yet, much less a closeted sodomite. Ergo,” he concluded, dusting his hands together, “one… unusually _pivotal_ possible career, utterly derailed. _Et voilà._ ”

She didn’t react, but he knew he had her. He laughed and sat back, supremely satisfied. “It was quite clever, really, if I do say so myself. No matter what happened, I won. One way, I had Nathaniel’s soul; another, I had his misery. But this way,” and he smiled, “the whole _world_ suffers. Game, set, and _match_.”

 _So there_ , he thought.

She stared at him for a moment, and then threw her head back and laughed.

The man blinked.

Her laughter was like bells, peal after peal, and drew eyes from all over the café. The man felt his jaw clenching as she continued to outright _giggle_ , uncertainty dropping over his triumph like the proverbial wet blanket. Why was she laughing? He’d _won_. He was sure of it.

Hadn’t he?

Finally she regained control of herself, smothering her giggles under a bright and knowing smile. He wanted to slap it off her face.

“Oh, my darling,” she said, kindly, and the man snarled automatically in response. “You really should think twice before meddling in things you don’t understand.”

What was she talking about? He understood it all perfectly. Who did she think had bloody well _invented_ bigotry and hatred and – oh.

“What,” he said, “you mean _love_?” He infused the word with all the contempt it so richly deserved, but it came out flatter than he’d meant it to.

“Well, that too,” she nodded, “but I was thinking more in terms of strategy.”

He frowned. “What?”

She raised her eyebrows, pretending surprise. “I should think it would be obvious. Nathaniel Fick beat you, you know.”

He reared his head back, affronted, and her smile became an outright smirk. “Oh, but he did. He outmatched you. And not only that, he did it without even knowing the rules of the game beforehand. Impressive work, wouldn’t you say?”

The man tried to keep his face still. “I dispute that interpretation,” he said. “And even if it were so, it hardly matters. I more than salvaged the situation.”

“Did you?” she said, thoughtfully, pursing her lips as if in thought. “Hmm. Well, if you really do think that, perhaps you should consider: if Nathaniel could beat you at your own game, on his own, with no outside help, how do you think he will do once he’s playing on his own turf?” She leaned forward. “And more importantly, how do you think he will do with someone like Brad Colbert at his side? Supporting him, every step of the way?”

The man felt himself go still, and she tilted her head.

“You’re very right, of course, that the world will set itself against them. I’m sure they will be told time and again that they face insurmountable obstacles.” She made a show of examining her nails. “I wonder,” she said, as if just thinking aloud, “what do you think people like them generally do, when told that something is _just too hard_? That it can’t be done? What do you think their response might be?”

He stared at her, frozen. She reached out and patted his hand.

“When at war,” she told him, gently, “it is unwise in the extreme to allow your opponents to join forces, no matter how bad their terrain. Particularly opponents as… determined as these.”

He swallowed, and considered the possibility that he had fucked up very, very badly.

She gave him a look which managed to be both smug and compassionate at once, which shouldn’t even be possible. “Ah, don’t worry,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll learn from your mistakes. Just like you lot always do, eh?” She patted his hand again, and he couldn’t even summon the energy to jerk away.

She smiled once more. “Until next time, my dear,” she said, and vanished. No one else in the café was allowed to notice.

The man didn’t know how long he sat there, staring at nothing, until he finally noticed that she had left her book behind. Slowly, he pulled it across the table to himself, and flipped it open to where she had marked her place.

The page was from Shakespeare’s _Henry IV, Part I_ : 

  _And I can teach thee, coz, to shame the devil_  
 _By telling truth: tell truth and shame the devil._  
 _If thou have power to raise him, bring him hither,_  
 _And I'll be sworn I have power to shame him hence._  
 _O, while you live, tell truth and shame the devil!_

Despite himself, he snorted.

“ _Touché_ , you old bastard,” he murmured. “Until next time.”

A moment later the table was empty, the pages of the book ruffling gently in the desert breeze.

 

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes/Warnings:** This story involves magical genderswap, in which Brad is transformed into a woman against his will. While I based some of his reactions to the situation on the experiences that I have read about of transgender people, his experience is not meant to be a true representation of the transgender experience, for reasons discussed in the story. There are also references in the story to internalized homophobia, (largely unconscious) impulses toward self-harm, and one very brief reference to suicidal ideation. If there is anything else you think should be noted here, please let me know in the comments.
> 
> This story started as a response to a wonderful prompt by Lj user FandomFan on the [Fic(k) Fest: A Generation Kill Multigenre Fic Fest"](http://generation-kill.livejournal.com/737638.html?thread=9872230#t9872230) post on the LJ Generation Kill community: "After OIF, Brad and Nate go their separate ways and lose touch. Some years later, Nate runs into a knockout tall blonde woman with whom he seems to have some extraordinary, unexplainable chemistry. Unexplainable, that is, until he realizes that this is, in fact, Brad."
> 
> I meant it to be a quick fill of a couple of thousand words, originally. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
> 
> Many thanks to the original prompter, and all those who praised the story on the LJ comm, and many apologies for how long it took me to finish it. It was a lot of work, but I'm very proud of the end result, and I hope you enjoyed it! If so, please let me know; concrit as well as any other input is adored.
> 
> Other notes:
> 
> The line Nate quotes to the man in Chapter 9 is Mephistopheles, from Goethe’s _Faust_ , the relevance of which should be fairly obvious:
> 
> <http://www.literary-quotations.com/f/faust_part_i.html>
> 
> In the same scene, Nate also mentions the term “a monkey’s paw”, a reference to the classic horror story “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs, which is short and worth reading in its entirety: 
> 
> <http://www.americanliterature.com/Jacobs/SS/TheMonkeysPaw.html>
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you for reading!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [(Podfic of) To Shame the Devil by Kalliste](https://archiveofourown.org/works/774085) by [chemm80](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chemm80/pseuds/chemm80)




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